It was curled on the pavement, forehead to knees, as if it had died while bowing. Its stripes were citrine-yellow, and the black of a moonless starless, clear night. It did not belong on a street, to be stepped on, I picked it up in a fold of glove, and in the taxi canted it onto a floral hankie, a small, thin, cotton death-glade-- and the bee moved, one foreleg, like an arm, feebly, as if old. It seemed not long for this world, and it seemed I could not save it, and had been saved, by its gesture, from smothering it all day in my bag. I would have liked to set it in a real glade, but I thought that it might still, right now, be suffering, yet I could not kill it directly--I shook it, from the hankie, out the window, onto West End Avenue, hoping that, before a tire killed it, instantly, it would hear and feel huge rushes of tread and wind, like flight, like the bee-god's escape.
Sharon OldsIt was curled on the pavement, forehead to knees, as if it had died while bowing. Its stripes were citrine-yellow, and the black of a moonless starless, clear night. It did not belong on a street, to be stepped on, I picked it up in a fold of glove, and in the taxi canted it onto a floral hankie, a small, thin, cotton death-glade– and the bee moved, one foreleg, like an arm, feebly, as if old. It seemed not long for this world, and it seemed I could not save it, and had been saved, by its gesture, from smothering it all day in my bag. I would have liked to set it in a real glade, but I thought that it might still, right now, be suffering, yet I could not kill it directly–I shook it, from the hankie, out the window, onto West End Avenue, hoping that, before a tire killed it, instantly, it would hear and feel huge rushes of tread and wind, like flight, like the bee-god’s escape.
Sharon Olds