“….bitten by a dead bee”

I don’t suppose he will be missed,
the bee I found dying on the
garden slabs.

I doubt there’s anyone
counting them out and back again
in the hive.

And does death mean anything to creatures
so small? In nature, after all, death is so
commonplace.

Still, it crawls—perhaps searching for that
out-of-the-way place the living seem to
seek to die, for

only the snails, whose trails end in
sudden corpses, carry on their backs their
own cairns.

                                                                                     © Steve Finn