Summer Sweet Shrub Notices the Wasps

It’s August and here they are marvelous and hungry,

These great thread-waisted ones whose constancy I love.

They’re not proud of sparking streaks of blue iridescence.

They don’t flaunt their wings, smoky black and gorgeous.

They don’t have to know what they’re doing.

Something set their clocks and made them hum.

I’m nectar to them. They go on sucking and sucking.

The fine hairs all over their bodies pick up pollen.

The grains shine. My speechless visitors cover me.

Their black bodies move on my trembling petals.

They disappear and I go on and on to set bud and sleep.

The John and Mim Poems is a portrait of a marriage and Miriam Levine’s gift to you.