The Bee and the Snowdrop

(with a bow to Robert Frost)

 

Mild February days:

Spring sidles up to us,

Impatient impresario.

In the roadside lane the snowdrop bows

To passers by, her multi-visored cap

Demure, screening her virgin secrets.

 

Here’s one who would explore –

Penetrate

Rifle

That hidden chamber.

With clever limbs he clings

To her stem, and his dangerous fluff

Beckons in soft, striped splendour.

 

Invasive bumble bee,

As insistent as this spring day

Where you’re a stranger;

You look so fatly misplaced there

On that delicate green stalk,

An anachronism that strayed,

Bold, premature, into February

Whose frosts may still you – suddenly -

Advanced so far from summer.

 

On the other side of the world

The polar icecaps melt.

Still the bumble bee holds fast

To this white maiden of spring.                                     February 1998