Black Bear in the Orchard It was a long winter. But the bees were mostly awake in their perfect house, the workers whirling their wings to make heat. Then the bear woke, too hungry not to remember where the orchard was, and the hives. He was not a picklock. He was a sledge that leaned into their front wall and came out the other side. What could the bees do? Their stings were as nothing. They had planned everything sufficiently except for this: catastrophe. They slumped under the bear’s breath. They vanished into the curl of his tongue. Some had just enough time to think of how it might have been – the cold easing, the smell of leaves and flowers floating in, then the scouts going out, then their coming back, and their dancing – nothing different but what happens in our own village. What pity for the tiny souls who are so hopeful, and work so diligently until time brings, as it does, the slap and the claw. Someday, of course, the bear himself will become a bee, a honey bee, in the general mixing. Nature, under her long green hair, has such unbendable rules, and a bee is not a powerful thing, even when there are many, as people, in a town or a village. And what, moreover, is catastrophe? Is it the sharp sword of God, or just some other wild body, loving its life? Not caring a whit, black bear blinks his horrible, beautiful eyes, slicks his teeth with his fat and happy tongue, and saunters on. Mary Oliver ……………………………………………………………………………………………
Posted on: Sat, 08 Nov 2014 11:39:22 +0000
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