Buttercups
by Caroline Mellor
I spent the morning fretting.
Will I ever be enough?
Have enough, do enough?
Will I ever earn enough money, have my own house,
enough savings to retire on?
Will life be kind to my children?
And, do these strange metrics of security have any meaning
on an overheating planet?
I spent the afternoon in the field.
For a good hour and a half
I watched the bees feeding on the buttercups,
noticing how the flowers dip and bend to meet the bee
and, after he gathers his bounty of golden dust,
how they bounce back up to catch the sun.
My questions went unanswered.
But by evening — that most beautiful of words, ‘evening’—
the garden was quiet
and the moon was rising over the hedgerows
in violet, star-speckled skies.
When I closed my eyes, all I could see
were those nectar-full yellow cups
bending and dipping to meet the bees in the high June light
and I was glad, then, that I had spent my afternoon in their gentle company
noticing how they never once asked if they were enough.
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