No Time for Sorrow

     “There’s always a hole in theories somewhere if you look close enough.”
          Mark Twain
 
He arrives alone, the leafcutter bee,
and with his mandible carves out a hole,
then flies off carrying a circle, light
as leafy air he’ll use to build his nest.
 
Everywhere I look I see his work:
on doilies under plates of morning rolls
in the window of any baker’s shop,
in every sucked or un-sucked polo mint,
 
below numbered flags on golf courses
or – halfway down the Canongate – beneath
a tree, where August’s evening light projects
a spot of gold on Fergusson’s bronze head.
 
Much later on the train when I’m asleep
he buzzes by to claim my ticket home.
 

Eleanor Livingstone

in collection Surprising the Misses McRuvie, 2023, Red Squirrel Press,
ISBN 978-1-913632-49-6