Small Lives

[poliphilo]

I was crouching down on the patio- looking at a moth- a cinnebar- charcoal grey wings with red stripes and spots- when a clumpy object sort of  flew, sort of tumbled down into my field of vision and broke into two parts, with one part whizzing off at an angle and the other dropping at my feet. There's a bee's nest in the eaves and a busy worker had just cleared out a dying sister.

The dying bee lay on its back, on the platform of its wings, compact, folded in, tidy- like an effigy on a tomb chest- with one of its legs twitching feebly.