Spring

Fat black bumblebees fucking in our yard

orgiastic they knot up, five or six

like a buzzing fist looping in mid-air

until two lock and the lucky

couple snaps off and lands intact

hunching like puppies. They've even done it

on my armrest: the male's bent knees

clutched her hips for his teensy shudder.

Then he took off with no more ceremony

than if she had been a flower.

She seemed stunned, helpless

for all of a nanosecond.

You could almost see her shrug it off

before she too flew away, undamaged.

Is this more fun than the human version?

Come out again in your pink swim suit,

my darling. The bees aren't swarming,

but I am.

MICHAEL RYAN'S recent memoir, Baby B, was published in 2004 by Graywolf Press, simultaneously with Houghton Mifflin's publication of his New and Selected Poems, which won the 2005 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and will be out in paperback in September.

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