Bloom

Our white crabapple trees bloomed last week.  The flowers were suddenly bursting in small groups, like strings of popcorn wrapped haphazardly along the branches.  The delicate arms of the tree danced and buzzed, alive with bumblebees moving from flower to flower, their legs fat with yellow pollen.  There’s nothing so good as this – the springing forth of life – and the beauty of it filled my chest and I thought, how can I move on from this?  How can I step away from such rapture to continue in any task but marveling at the tender beauty of our world?  How can I be eager for anything but to find my place here with the bees?

And so I did for awhile, find my place with the bees, that is, and I let the buzz fill my ears and the scent fill my nose and the sun fill my hair as I studied the buds and the blooms and the bees.  I knew the brilliance would be fleeting and sure enough a light rain took the blooms down the next day and the bees moved on to find pollen elsewhere.