and an Orange Tree
A lone orange fruit tree is abuzz
with the life of its habitant ants,
in their practical way, who have wound
up around like electrical lines
one thin trunk of the many-trunked tree
high into evergreen foliage
to a safecracked and burrowed sweet brooch,
while five-pointed blossom white stars
from thin stamen are twinkling end
of the summer sweet pollen in love
for their pistils. Much fecund, much seed.
Blooms, contentedly fertilized, bulb
at their base with round infant green fruit,
as a spectator circles above--
one black turkey vulture--quite aware
of rich life in its niches and roosts.
And the storybook bees, go-betweens,
are here pushing their heads in and in
as they grab at weak petals and rub
against stigma to consummate friends.
In the midst of this sex, with rouged cheeks
preens a hummingbird, perched on a branch
of a second small trunk, whose head bends
for soft licks with a filament tongue
on green feathers; who ruffles the back
of its neck with a beautiful shake,
then posing with two closed Spanish fans,
flicks its wings open--feathers pop out
from their crescent bone curve, and the bird
with its piccolo chatter flies off
as one anxious to flirt with its kind.
