Bees

Here come the bees,

the innumerable bees,

their small brains on fire

for the peanut butter and honey

of my youth, carried all morning

deep into the pathless woods

behind the cottage.

Sweat bees, dark and scant

of body—their sound scant,

scant. Why did I love so

to be afraid? If they sting me

now I will be glad of it,

of their sharpness, their crisp

shells, their fairy wings.

I will be glad for their partisanship,

their swarming like the waft

of a hand that knows what’s best,

their conductor’s grand gesture.

I will be glad even for their sticking

in thick honey, twisting

with a quiet, intimate fatality.

They have come back from

far away because I was too young

then. They move into all this

absence, into the subdivisions

named glade and hill and wood.

They are the ones who know how

to pierce the space around

my one-and-only sandwich with

their personal, pointed grief.