Adrian Rice: Among the Lavender

Honeybees spend their busy day
hovering among the lavender
with constant co-workers for company.

Each a natural-born spacewalker,
they lend the light leaves some sway
as they drift from flower to flower.

For them, perhaps, the pale purple
of the holy herb is just
another colour, and the beautiful

fragrance may be only a wind-blown
aroma-sugar aimed solely at us,
but from sunup to sundown

honeybees love lavender and toil together
for the good of the whole hive.
Come daligone, a few workaholics are

left drone-dozy on a psychedelic buzz,
dream-heavy with sweet nectamares
on their soft perfumy beds.

What the hive finally harvests,
the lavender won’t miss.
Lavender exists for this.

Copyright 2013 Adrian Rice. First published in The Clock Flower by Press 53.

Adrian Rice is from Belfast, Northern Ireland and now lives with his wife and young son in Hickory, North Carolina. He is a Lecturer at Appalachian State University.