It was the end of the summer and all the yellow pollen smell of an afternoon. Withheld wings of longing clutched in my torso. The middle of the day is furious. The bees soldier on in the sunburnt grass. Their gossamer simmer—like ladies in saffron, all hoary and damp beneath their breasts—teems in this waste of heat. I painted tomatoes, found them of Prussian red cast, untrained on sodden fusty hay. I wrote string beans, tangled up in their green finery, strangled like the twine they were tied upon. A thin thread of fiery flourish; tiny stamens tongued my ankles. The golden feathers were hidden behind an old rock. Goldfinch? Grosbeak? Small, flaxen, pithy; the most beautiful thing we had surprised upon in our thousand year reign. You said most likely chicken feathers blown carelessly across the field. Well, I threw in the word “carelessly” and thought Warbler? How verbose and inaccurate we both were. . . The cartilage of birds and bees signals summer’s end. They were alive just a few short moments ago. Under my massive feet, I crunch their skulls and wings everywhere. Peering through the open door of my bird house, my helmet, my bee bonnet burst. The swarm split open. Witness the royal jelly strewn on my path. . . wildly, wildly.