Daddy: 1933

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.