Bees in the Rain

From distant friends we hear of a late freeze.
They snapshot their gardens, knowing their
crocuses, the daffodils and irises that break winter’s
hold on the spirit will be shriveled and droop in that
first, flat light of northern mornings, dim as a closet.
From other, farther quarters there is even news of an unlikely snow driving across the upstate hills,
driving the sheep to scamper into the barn, alarm in the cadence of their bells.

Here, of course, there is nothing of that. Nor ever will be.
Thirty years of seasons assure us– our own garden
flowers always in several somewheres at once.
Our winter, mostly sun-warmed days of cool breezes,
is as colorful as spring, and the autumn, coming on now,
with its gentle rains, warm and convivial, seems the loveliest of them all. Just today, in a soft fall of an hour’s rain I saw, from the kitchen window, amid the blood-red vigor of the Jatropha, that bees went busy about their work to bring us fruits and flowers to the last days of our year.