We'll Keep It Just For Us, and the Bees

Even the flies can have a little bit,
Sukha says to me about some yogurt,
A fleck of which has been left on a plate.
It's sunset, some time ago, and too late
For bees, kids, poets who feel belated,
Not that that fact has put any of us
To bed. We stay out instead until ten.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
Sukha counts the bees and hours. I lean out
Over a railing, absentmindedly.

My old nemesis, gravity, lures me
Down below with the soft green promises
Of tamed high-country meadows at twilight.
I'm not buying. Not yet, not quite. Bugs bite,
To remind me of the hazards of life.
I half distract myself from temptation
By considering etymology.
Supposedly, graves came from verbs "to scratch"
While the weightier gravitas derived
From its earlier self, itself alone.

Good old Proto Indo-European,
Mythos of my myth-resisting old age.
No one's as old as in middle age,
The last medieval, the last in between
Of all the ages from cradle to grave,
The last transition that isn't to bed

Or sometimes is. I scratch my heavy head.
Sukha draws a scrawling of a beehive
To convince the last of the honeybees
Awake away. Long ago, as I said.