90s x pollinators
Florida Botanical Gardens, Largo, FL
Where have all the pollinators gone?
Do doo do
Do doo do
A riot of flowers
One of my favorite phrases
I am surrounded by
A riot of flowers
Open to the world in orgiastic beckoning
All virginal white and pure pinwheel jasmine
Voluptuous and boisterous double orange hibiscus
Stately purple and yellow king’s mantle
And subtle dwarf yellow mussaenda
So subtle I barely noticed their ribald flowers among the green
All ridged and raised
They smell like lilies
And thus death
All here
Wanting, needing, waiting
For pollinators
To justify their love
Silently
Patiently
Waiting
I see not a fly
A bee
A mosquito
The air here is
Empty
These days
We are all
Waiting
For the inevitable collapse
Empty
Waiting
I grieve the swarms of bugs that used to coat my windshield
Streaks of bugs’ bodies so thick they’d cake the glass
How strange
To miss that
To ache for it
To know
What a spotless windshield in the middle of a road rip means
Impending collapse
The webs of life ripped apart
Like that of an unwelcome spider’s
Beheaded snakes on sidewalks
Needing to be disposed of
Left to rot in the sun
Just for trying
To eek out an existence
Among the concrete
You think
You can keep all of this at bay
But all you’re doing
Is erecting imaginary walls
If only you knew
How powerful
And meaningful
The imagination can be
You wouldn’t waste it
On keeping yourself separate
Whatever happened to
Tear down this wall?
So
We wait
Like unpollinated flowers
Optimistically inviting
An inevitable end
But then
A solitary butterfly
Flutters along on the breeze
And a cicada sings over
The roar of an airplane
And I’m not done
And neither are we