Honeybee

It was a curious sound floating by my ear,
almost unnoticed.  Faint.  Intermittent.
Gone.  Back again but not for long.
Whirring.

A delicate honeybee, wings fanning the air,
contending with death, unsuccessfully,
burrowed in the gray hallway carpet.
Captive of stucco walls and screen doors.
No place for a bee.  Death trap.
Too many days without sweet pollen and
shifting breezes.

No resistance to human touch.
No objection to resting in the palm of a hand.
No complaint about nestling under the fig vines in
the back yard.  The soil is deliciously warm.
The air fresh.

Death will come sooner or later.  No options.
No deals.  Reality.

So how to die?  Swallowed by a ravenous
vacuum cleaner.  Tossed into the garbage from
the old silver dustpan?  Scooped up in the
coarse fiber of a paper towel?
Indignity.

Better to dissolve into the earth.  Better
to return to molecules and ancient moments.
Better to die into life than into death.
Much better.

Give me a place where the earth is
warm, where rain and sunshine
combine to create.  Give me the earth.
Give me again the place from which I came.
Give me the soil of my soul.

I will know that place and it will know me.
We will embrace for a short time and then I
will be off to a new star.