Bright Wings

The late afternoon sun turned this busy bee's wings to copper for a few seconds. She moved clockwise around the tiny star-shaped flower heads on the astrantia blossom, gathering nectar.

Her glowing wings reminded me of the final stanza of one of my favorite poems, Gerard Manley Hopkins' "God's Grandeur."  

And for all this, nature is never spent;
   There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
   Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
   World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

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