If one takes
a walk on a clear sunny
day in middle April,
when the first
willows are in bloom,
one may often see
young bumblebee queens
eagerly sipping
nectar from the catkins —
thus begins
the one book written
by Otto Emil Plath.
It is a delightful thing
to pause and watch
these queens, clad
in their costumes of rich
velvet, their wings
not yet torn —
he wrote it the year after
Sylvia was born —
by the long foraging
flights which
they will be obliged
to take later.