Death Waits

The honey bee did plunge into the spider’s web,
Invisible strands of stick… Like a moth in a net.
At the edge of the trap the insect pulled against the impede,
Like a tide pool resisting the erosive power and pull of the sea.
Held in that fog of the flight interrupted, seeking clarity and freedom of a daze.
Alarm line tripped and the wire walker appeared, an elegant Death on eight legs.
She set herself, huntress of experience, in an easy space of striking distance.
Check, Honey Bee…. Check. Death is hungry, but above all, Death is patient.
Thrash and Pull and Toil and Strain to return to order the Spring and it’s Winter
Until the energy is spent. And Death still waits. “For We Were Born To Die”, wrote Shakespeare.
And then he did. As if, to prove his point and put his poetry, properly pat.
And the honey bee slows as Death’s spindly forelegs hold the golden thorax flat.
Electric! The strike is as fast as the release is an instantaneous flutter.
It awakens the pollinator, toxin already at work, involuntary shudderings
Of the winged vessel in convulsive writhings that yield to a sleep-like state.
And Death sits in her element. In patience. In time. Death breathes. And Death Waits.