Our daughters have become orchards, 
petalled and fragrant as light.

In the agile branches brash song
and incandescent orioles. 

It is their turn to be divine now
while we grow more mortal 

every day.  We wake to the ash
of dreams upon our tongues, and catch

the intermittent scent of accidents 
and inevitable calamities we have yet 

to suffer, yes, our throats swell 
with the vibrato of everything we’ve  

been compelled to know, but today 
beneath the red-nippled trees, long-haired 

meadow grasses shiver and daffodils 
gesture the lithe hands of their fronds.  

Let the heart twist like a flower breaking
into blossom, lasting is not all.

On the feral hillside
the honeybee hunts the 		
blush pink cups of applebloom	
on the undomesticated bough.
The electric zum of its membranous wings
weaves a strand of sound into                     
the hoarse-throated hum 
of highway noise, that persistent                                
human undertone palpable	                  
these three miles distant.	                  				                 
As limited as that:                 
one bee in the blooms
of an untam ed apple:
in the soft May twilight 
the satisfaction is profound:
this appearance 
of meaning  
beyond our meanings.