A red-winged blackbird by the pond pecks
the grass for beetles. Scarlet stripes flash across
the wings as he flies to the paperbark maple.
He calls out five high notes, takes off again,
then disappears, chirping over the potting shed.
I follow the path flanked by ostrich ferns
and regal maples, turn left at the end
of the low rock wall at the sign for the English
Style Flower Garden. We all have our favorite
blooms and so it seems do bees: comfrey
with its large leaves, good for healing wounds,
is blanketed by honeybees, squeezing into the pink
bell-shaped flowers. Dozens of bees,
in their yellow fur capes swarm the Heartleaf
speedwell, clamber up the purple spikes,
their antennae probing the tiny trumpets
to sniff out sugar. My mother’s garden
too, was a haven for bees, the hardy English
lavender bush by the stone birdbath called to them,
so too the fragrance of the rambling rose climbing
the wooden trellis. I can still see her that September,
the green dress she wore, leaning over a bed
of zinnias, shaking the dry seedpods into a paper bag
to store in the cool stone larder until spring.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 4.
Patricia Hemminger’s poems have appeared in journals and magazines including most recently, Streetlight Magazine, Humana Obscura, The Write Launch, as well as SLANT and in her chapbooks What Do We Know of Time? and All Things Gone. She holds a PhD in chemistry and is a graduate of NYU’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and of Drew University’s MFA Poetry Program. She is currently producer of a documentary focused on green chemistry solutions to environmental pollution.
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