by Judy Galbraith
By the aid of reason, so we assure ourselves,
We have ‘conquered nature.’
Carl Jung
Outside my window,
black birds pry at
a lantern
They jimmy the plastic,
coax window.
Their thorn-black feet
grip empty
flower pots,
a spigot—
whatever holds.
Inside, my mother is telling
how honey runs down the side of a house.
She is saying a hive
so deep in the farmhouse attic
leached its way
into the crawl space—
The murmurings congealed in the rafters.
and no one knew until nectar
whispered from the skin of a house,
the inscription of bees.
And then what a scene,
veiled men in white suits and helmets,
brushes, knives,
boxes, and sheets,
the smoker and bees moving upwards
into the dark
The dead go pouring into heaven.
Finally, the search for the queen.
* * * *
Imagine
what an undetected swarm
can do, moving right in,
of not even knowing
until honey bleeds from the cracks?
In your own body consider
the unseen swarming.
Obsession
hiving in the child
you would die for?
Dark spot petaling
its taste so sweet. . .
and when at last
you see what is there,
What if
(unlike my grandfather)
you do nothing?
You don’t cull the hive from the house.
When you see the honey,
you say,
"How wonderful"
as a child might,
"Gold beneath my own roof."
* * * *
I have been watching bees.
I have followed them into the invisible
throat of a red honeysuckle.
I have seen them sink,
and I have lifted them in my hand.
Now, eighty years
since that hive, Mother,
I am breathing a swarm.
I am swallowing a yellow river.
I hear the tearing of fabric
like blackbirds crying.
The familiar face in the mirror
the farmhouse whose every corner
one has explored as child
hums with life undetected.
And I am the weeping
crowd by this grave,
clinging to a corpse.
Haven’t they measured their lives by that corpse?
Haven’t I
measured the worth of the hive
By the house?
And is that the only measure?
On a winter’s night, when the bees are dormant and the clover dead,
my grandfather seals the entrance to the enclosure
and moves the hive all the way to the orchard.
About the Author
Judy Galbraith is a graduate of the MFA program at Arizona State University. She is a member of the English faculty at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix where she teaches composition and journalism.