that the brushes on the bottle-brush bush could not be redder,
that a hummingbird looks in through the window screen,
that both my arms still do their job
and I’m not in charge of what fall does to the trees,
nor of the sun’s stride east to west and back again
and worker bees desire what the red brush stamens offer;
Mason bees leave piles of sawdust
when they grind holes to lay their offspring in,
underneath my three back steps.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 4.
Maria Castell-Greene has “been around a long time as wife, mother, nurse, grandmother, was lauded for my chart notes on the nursing unit, so when I retired, poems have kept the soup of my life simmering. My chapbook called ‘Muffled Song’ was published in 2016. Other poems appear in Poetry Quarterly and The Avocet. I live with my husband here on the San Francisco Peninsula.”
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