The Dance of Pollinators

Beneath morning light, where wilgas drip and warblers trill and call,
A gentle song begins to rise and wander over all,
From golden fields to grevillea blooms that spill their saffron flare,
The dancers stir with secret wings that shimmer through the air.

They do not court applause or fame, nor seek the eye of man,
But spin the thread of life itself in ways no artist can;
The bee, with saddlebags flecked in gold, a harvester of sun,
Returns to hive with sacred dust when every bloom is done.

The blue-banded and the honeyed kind, the bumble slow and round,
They navigate a world of scent and read the flowering ground,
They speak in steps of sacred code, in waggled lines of lore,
A thousand minds, a single heart, their dance an unseen chore.

Where crowea and bush-pea bloom, they rise with silent grace,
Their passage leaves no footprint on the land they help embrace,
Yet every ash, each banksia tree, and native orchid rare,
Is whispered into being by the wanderers of air.

And wow, the butterflies that flit in stained-glass arabesque,
The grass blue, painted lady, and the orchard-winged burlesque,
Their silken flights are brushstrokes drawn on canvas blue and wide,
They court the light, then drink from blooms with elegance and pride.

The lesser-known, those hoverflies and tiny native bees,
The beetles masked in emerald shell that drift on scented breeze,
Their names are few, their fame is none, but still they play their part,
In orchestrating life upon the land’s vast beating heart.

In mudflat fringe and inland scrub, by dune and meadow fair,
Their dance ignites the silent spark that blossoms everywhere.
No orchard thrives, no vineyard grows, no melon swells with rain,
Without the touch of wings that pass and softly bless the grain.

They are the soul of bud and fruit, the weavers of the thread,
The ones who labour silently where lesser eyes have tread,
And in their flight, the world is stitched into a living song,
A harmony that sounds above the human shout and throng.

For danger walks the edges now, with poisons sweetly named,
The fields are sprayed, the forests cleared, and none will take the blame;
The flowers shrink, the numbers fall, the dance becomes a crawl,
And still we chase convenience, blind to nature’s muffled call.

Neonics in morning mist will steal a hive’s whole fate,
And monstrous ploughs will slice through homes where soft wings pollinate,
The monocrop will sprout alone, a sterile sea of green,
While once there danced a thousand kinds, now barely one is seen.

The pesticide, the parasite, the foreign weed and flame,
All play their parts in quiet death that bears no face or name,
But in the song of failing wings, the silence drawing near,
We glimpse the edge of all we know, and tremble at its fear.

Though not all tales are wrought in loss, resistance too takes flight,
In gardens grown for nectar’s sake and hedgerows set to right,
Where schoolyards buzz with native hives and rooftops breed the swarm,
And wildflowers burst through concrete cracks with joyful, bright reform.

For in the hand that plants a seed or leaves the clover be,
There beats a bond with things unseen, a pact with air and bee,
Each blossom nursed, each spray unused, each lawn that we let grow,
Becomes a vow to join the dance and let the old ways flow.

The children learn with eager eyes the names of wing and flower,
They build the paths for bees to roam, and mark the butterfly hour,
They catch the gleam of cuckoo wasps in hakea at dawn,
And hum the ancient rhythms that the pollinators spawn.

Give voice to elders’ dreaming tales, of bushland deep and wide,
Of sugarbag in hollowed trees and rainbow wings that glide,
Set stories loose on open tracks from coast to red heart’s flame,
So every child might know the pulse that keeps the world the same.

And may we write with tender hands the futures still to come,
With cities green and rooftops wild, and laws that do no harm,
So that the buzz returns in spring, the flutter graces skies,
And all who dance from bloom to bloom shall never meet demise.

What are we, without their grace, their artful, tireless flight?
A species blind to golden threads that bind us to the light,
So pause, and watch the blossom stir bathed in the golden sun,
And give your thanks to those who fly and keep the world as one.

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