Pollinator

For three weeks, flowers,

before spring’s green rush 

sputters in high desert heat.

Bees run riot, stumble bud to 

bud in nectar-drunk ecstasy, 

pin legs fat with smears of pollen.

One bumbling bee sprawls

head down in a tulip’s satin 

throat, sugar-sated and spent.

What more could you want 

than to consume and be 

consumed with such lust,

to let beauty lead you, 

called toward sweetness with 

single-minded devotion,

lace wings gracing petals, 

legs anointing each anther—

a benediction that next year 

will again bring bloom, 

bring feast—your own 

wind-borne body giving rise 

to what nourishes, to the home 

where your wild flight ends in 

a geometry of hive and honey,

nature’s arithmetic having solved

for a life in which pleasure and 

purpose are one and the same.