Bees offer honey far more readily than they sting,

You say as we watch

Their fuzzy bodies flit from flower to flower

In the same clover.

_Trifolium repens._

They’re not native though nothing in our yard is.

The bees don’t care,

The same way we extend our soft skinned arms

Through the blackberry thickets

With the juice of our labors to show,

When we come back out.

I get older, my skin’s not so soft,

Not so smooth.

But the bees will still nap

In the bindweed (_Convolvulus arvensis_), butts up

Sprinkled with the pollens of their labors.