“…A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.”
~ “A Song on the End of the World,” Czeslaw Milosz
In a picture from a book on how to sew
your own clothes, a woman pulls out
the linings of her pockets to show
they are in a contrast color: red,
like heads of tulips emerging from the sides
of her hips, or koi nosing out of the depths
of a pond. Such even, hand-stitched rows
going around the neckline and the wrists
and the hem— like a path on a field
to illustrate where a bee might circle,
driven by some tiny stroke of sweetness. The linen
is thick and coarse and gray. The air is full
of smoke, and there are cries on the bridge.
But the bee, the bee: it keeps threading the air.