The Bumble Bee

Yesterday I found a bee, a bumble bee, life had quite flown from it.  I don't know why I picked it up and brought it home. I placed it upon a piece of crumpled soft white paper and put it on the kitchen windowsill so that I could look at it as I worked. It wasn't even a ghost of itself.  It was an empty shell, an empty shell shrouded in sadness as its beauty lingered.  I touched the velvet of its back and the fragility of its transparent wings. Now it can only decay.  I can capture it on film or a drawing but I cannot breathe life back into its form.  It has gone forever.
   Today I walked in the Greenwood along the path through the tunnel of trees.  The wind roared through the treetops creating a malevolence that was palpable.  I shivered but not from the cold.  There was a presence, as if a thousand tiny eyes were watching me and there were rustlings in the undergrowth and odd creepings through the vines.  A robin watched me warily from a branch and a blackbird with a beak full of grubs for its young stopped in her tracks.  A tiny rabbit, new to the world, fled down a bank in fear as I walked along the path.  Then crack, a cumbersome pigeon defying gravity shot into the air like a cannon ball and flew up the rise barely missing the top of my head.  I drew in a sharp breath and made for a sunny clearing to escape from  intruding irrational thoughts.
    Tomorrow I shall wrap the bumble bee in a shroud of muslin and carry him back to the Greenwood and hide him under a pall of dry brown leaves.  I shall have given the Greenwood back her own.  The spell will be broken and peace restored.  We are never far from enchantment if we have the eyes to see.