To Err Is Human; to Forgive, Supine
—S. J. Perelman, Baby, It’s Cold Inside, 1970
You must know the bees have come early
this year too: I see them visit aster, sweet
Williams,
bleeding hearts, and azalea blossoms hardy
enough
to not have crisped with the last late frost.
Whatever light
bees give off after the last snow, I hold up to
you now.
—Aimee Nezhukumatathil, “Letters from Two Gardens,” Orion, 2014
Once it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow’s arch, which filled the lower stratum of the
