First Lessons in Beekeeping
Laura-Gray Street
Walking into the humming,
he said to me, Don’t be afraid they
can smell your fear.
I had long hair then, lank on my neck
and shoulders that were halter-bare
and glazed with summer sweat.
—
Sometimes the house swarms with bees. Finding no exit,
they console themselves with plaster, harvesting
dust in their pollen baskets. A household.
—
I was drawn to the boy blindly, circumstantially.
We kissed between rows of tasseled corn.
He led me by the hand to the hill of bee hives.
—
Sometimes I feel them at my elbow, urging,
or browsing along femur, murmuring
through sternum, lodging
in inner ear.
—
Because all honey comes from bees.
—
The orange peels on the table steep
in afternoon light, staining the wood bitter,
dense flesh emptied to formality.
Old bees they fly off and don’t come back.
Fly out to die because flying out and dying is what they do.
—
But reports of dead drones cascaded down the hives,
mats of dead bees pooled almost six feet around the hives.
And pollinators that live in hedge rows and woods:
feral, fading.
—
Electric air.
Don’t run, he called
as I ran downhill, bucking,
as the bees tangled in my hair drove
their stingers into my scalp and neck.
—
You get enough Nosema cranae, a colony will die.
You get enough viruses, the colony will die.
You get enough mites, the colony will die.
Enough exposure to insecticides, enough drought,
enough sudden weather, enough sterile pollen,
enough stupid people, the colony will die.
—
Was it the shampoo—lab-constructed
supermarketed florals—that drew them
so deeply into that curtain?
Then the animal undercurrents—oily fear,
metallic adrenaline—bubbled up,
agitated the room.
—
Sometimes, balled as one body
they careen and swerve, launch
themselves at chinks and chippings,
probing for flaws. A muscular
frustration.
—
Orange seeds in my palm:
I imagine the groves now stranded,
pinpricks of bee hum and sun that burn
when I close my hand.
—
Hold still
Hold still Hold
still Hold still
Hold
still
—
When a bee lands where my hand’s still
sticky with juice, I will myself to relax,
to breathe calmly and focus on observing this
infinitely interesting living thing.
—
No almonds, cherries, peaches, apples,
avocados, blueberries, cranberries, sunflowers,
cantaloupes, watermelon, cucumbers, oranges.
Only planks and dry wall.
—
Then I give way to instinct.
—
I can still taste that first kiss
of bees in my hair.
If I could have walked
calmly with them from there to here.