Perfectly Queen … of the Bees
It was a few weeks ago now that she showed up on the morning rounds of my little nature. There were still some of the little people/creatures to be found in the fields and woods as the winter, such as it is here, hadn’t yet taken a firm hold. Grass was still growing and leaves hadn’t fallen, not much of either. An in-between time you could say, not yet too cold for long enough to drive everything to death or shelter.
The field of long grasses was beginning to dry out with few of nature’s flowers, man’s weeds, still blooming here and there. Little yellow and red striped bells of beauty to me, shining here and there at the tops of the now yellowing threads of the earth’s summer blanket. Calling out to the remaining little people, come to me, here I am, just for you my love. Drink deep and live a little longer in my cold Elysian field.
And there, down the tracks of the season’s comings and goings, I saw a sign of wonder and mystery. A solitary queen, of queens, sitting in the shadows of the morning sun. Drinking the shine as it rose on the dew, warming to a new day to which there were now so few. My little queen, ‘tis you.
So I went to her, and with a passion new, tended her rising ‘til she had awoken true. From this way and that I saw she was fine and I, labouring in the rising sun, a little heady on just the scent of her wine. My, my, what a lovely so new. The form and the colours a blessing of Thine.
Then, inevitably she woke and I stood back to hear what she spoke. A tinkling sound to the ear of the round, a way of the listening, and the speaking, not often found. And what was it she said that touched me so, was it something you hear now that I can no longer know, or keep.
It’s that same sound, of the blackness, the silence so deep!
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Snake in the Grass
I was out walking through the tall dry grass one recent sunny day and was about to put my foot down when I caught a sense of something out of place – made me stop dead.
A shape that only one creature I know makes, a long and perfect double S. It was obviously a snake from the go but the oddest thing is it didn’t move when I nearly trod on it.
I stopped mid-stride and pulled back slowly and tested with my stick, an indispensable tool. When I was satisfied it wasn’t going to strike I got closer for a rare look at a snake in the wild.
It still didn’t move and I saw its eye was glazing over, a little milky, a sign of death long over. Inspecting it closely from head to ‘foot’ I could see what happened, why it died on this spot.
Its tail was wrapped in a dried out stalk of the long grass that grows here. The grass and tail were intertwined the way you see snakes mating on tv, sometimes, and it looked like the snake was trying to pull away.
But instead of untwining as snakes can, this one tried to pull straight off the grass and the grass cut into its tail, down to the bone, tighter and tighter the more the snake struggled.
And that’s how it died, struggling to live. Held firmly to the spot by a thread of grass wound tight around its tail.
Strange that the snake would have been caught so easily but that’s nature, you can’t take nature for granted.
It was a perfect death anyway. And a perfect life.
Who’s to say otherwise?
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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