Bees in Lavender
        Only man's sick of blood,
        and man's not so sick of it either.
                        —Robert Frost

Workaholics, hijackers
hover, bending every stalk
over in this city of stalks, un-
burdening each small window of nectar.

Only they can see through
to honey.

In a world for the moment
without birds, without breezes, without butterflies
they fill the mind
like the evening news
after a bad day.

Near the south end
of the newly mulched garden, their dance
turns to random music—something
between a radio reduced to static
and a dying electric razor.
I try to follow just

one—who fills its one
note with seventeen flowers
before I lose sight of it in the swarm
of likenesses. Lavender sways

toward sunset, becoming
the mirror that won't break, the windows
that keep falling.
On this feedback loop
in dying color, bees

become planes, become bodies
become planes, become bodies
until they all vanish at once.

Steady as vengeance,
flowers arise,
blue matches here and now
and now.

Tweet

Copyright © 2021 Gilbert Allen All rights reserved
from Believing in Two Bodies
Kelsay Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission