Ed. Note: I wrote this poem in March 2013.
You know the way the bee bumbles
zooming around the iris, daffodils, lilies
working so very hard to make honey happen
traveling back to the hive to deposit
the payload, never distracted,
never returning to where it found
that secret sweetness, that pale yellow-green
fuzz coating each little leg.
You know the way the ball bounces
past second base, towards the outfield
where the old guys with the most speed
and agility are placed, the seventy-year-old coach looking
for some advantage against a team of
sixty- and fifty-somethings. He’s
been here for over thirty seasons now,
because he believes diamonds are forever
a man’s best friend.
You know the way the jelly beans roll
around the middle of a bright pink plastic egg,
clacking against the side, sounding like the
castanets of a flamenco dancer spinning across
wooden floorboards, or so you imagine
as you’re only six, or seven, maybe eight,
and this year’s Easter basket is full
of all the chocolate and candies you like best
and maybe a fuzzy toy rabbit, or a yellow chick
that winds up and waddles tenuously across the carpet.
You know the way spring is sprung:
through buds and shoots, through wind and water,
through bat and ball and bee and bean,
through each season, the promise to return.
Wonderful, Corinne! All of it, really, leading to those last four marvelous lines that land the poem with rhythmic alliteration and not a little joy!
love your poem!