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.