A Bee

Bent limbs

Laden with fruit

Mind growing

Like a tuber

She sinks and sways

Drunk on the honey

Fouled by the last flower’s nectar.

Buzzing, sun-baked

Squint eyed and smiling

This eunuch beast

Messengers love

Between petals and matriarch queens.

Through reticulate chambers

Lusty with wax

She scurries laughing

Under her ample load.

She survives the burden of this life

Wind blown and battered

Yet muscling on past the colors

Placed by Flora to guide her flight.

She does not see

The denizen drones who depend on her cargo.

She does not understand the meaning of her journey.

She knows no rest.

She battles wind and sun

Until that day when the instinctive barb

Blasts burns and bludgeons through

Leaving her hollow body

Flat and silent.

NOTE: Worker bees are female, a fact pointed out to me by my friend Liz.  In the first draft of this poem I referred to them as male.  Mea Culpa.