BEE WATCHING

 1.
 I can't remember the last time
 I stopped to watch a bee step
 from blossom to blossom,
 
 stand here entranced 
 by this four-cornered dance
 (insect, color, pollen, nectar)  

 take some time to contemplate
 all of the factors
 that had to evolve
            synchronicitously
                                                                             for even this tiny slice
                                                                             of an ecosystem to emerge.  

                                                                             2.
                                                                             The bee, however,
                                                                             simply harvests,
                                                                             then returns to her nest.

PIECES 

I decide to start collecting them
with today's broken plastic arm
that once pulled a chain,
lifting the flapper, allowing water
to flow into my toilet's bowl.  

I'll include the old handle too
since the replacement piece
comes with another handle
attached to a new brass arm. ("Good,
sturdier than plastic," I tell myself.)  

I can put the two old useless parts
into a box somewhere, then,
when whatever is going to stop working
next around the house stops working
I'll store its broken pieces
in the same place.  

Eventually I'll have enough junk
to reconnect in the form of a sculpture.
I'll include some new parts
for toilets and other household amenities too,
as well as a few items which
have continued to work as intended
year after year, thus earning
a dignified retirement.  

And when I have succeeded
in cementing all of this together
(the mostly old and broken, the few
new, along with some still-
functional-but-ready-to-rest)
in a manner you would never
        have expected— 
aesthetically pleasing from as many
angles as can be arranged—
let me suggest that I will have created
an appropriate metaphor
        for my life.  

Perhaps, I'm thinking, for your life, too.

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Bee in flowers photo by Pat Jordan