Honeybee Read Online Free PDF Page A

Shepherd.
    Â 
    Watch us humans as we enter our rooms, remove our shoes and watches, and stretch out on the bed with a single good book. It’s the honey of the mind time. Light shines through our little jars.

Bees Were Better
    In college people were always breaking up.
    We broke up in parking lots,
    beside fountains.
    Two people broke up
    across the table from me
    at the library.
    I could not sit at that table again
    though I didn’t know them.
    I studied bees, who were able
    to convey messages through dancing
    and could find their ways
    home to their hives
    even if someone put up a blockade of sheets
    and boards and wire.
    Bees had radar in their wings and brains
    that humans could barely understand.
    I wrote a paper proclaiming
    their brilliance and superiority
    and revised it at a small café
    featuring wooden hive-shaped honey dippers
    in silver honeypots
    on
    every table.

Invisible
    I used to walk out past the candle factory
    where the whole air smelled like sweet wax
    and the wall advertising BEE SUPPLIES
    made me feel better, knowing that was
    one more thing I would probably never need.
    Far, far, till whatever was weighing me
    shrank and the roses grew audible
    in gardens again, nodding their heads.
    At the library, hoboes read magazines,
    they never sat together.
    Tables spread with stock pages, metro news,
    while the fat clock reeled off hours
    and the hoboes returned to wherever they slept.
    Once a hobo stood in my zinnias with his big feet,
    said he was looking for the hose.
    I said, “It’s right behind you”
    and he closed his eyes while drinking.
    Sometimes, walking in the city,
    I felt suddenly thirsty,
    each storefront sparkling,
    women at stoplights,
    the glossy shine of their lips.
    I wanted to enter restaurants with them
    where the clink of words made business sound real.
    Each time they swallowed, a waiter tensed,
    moved towards them with the pitcher.
    I wanted the small room between sentences,
    the dark and wonderful room.
    When they rose, waiter with towel
    folded on arm standing expectantly by.
    I wanted to feel that moment when
    everyone disappears to one another,
    she steps out swinging her pocketbook,
    his hands return to his trousers
    and the new tablecloth appears,
    shaken free of its folds.
    I could walk home again,
    having seen that. The clouds would be
    opening doors and windows above us.
    I could cross a street and
    step right through.

Girls, Girls
    When the boys are alone,
    they wash the dishes with facecloths.
    When a honeybee is alone—rare, very rare—
    it tastes the sweetness
    it lives inside all the time.
    What pollen are we gathering, anyway?
    Bees take naps, too.
    Maybe honeybees taste pollen side by side
    pretending they’re alone.
    Maybe the concept “alone” means nothing
    in a hive.
    A bumblebee is not a honeybee.
    It only pretends to be.
    The cell phone in your pocket
    buzzes against your leg.
    It’s not a honeybee though. It’s just a
    mining bee, or leaf-cutter, or
    carpenter.
    You’re stung by messages from people far away.
    You can’t make anyone well.
    You can’t stop a war.
    What good are you?
    Bees drink from thousands of flowers,
    spitting up nectar
    so you may have honey
    in your tea.
    Maybe you don’t want to think about it
    so much.
    Pass the honey please.
    During winter, bees lock legs
    and beat wings fast to stay warm.
    Fifty thousand bees can live in
    a single hive.
    Clover honey is most popular
    and clover is a weed.
    All the worker bees are female.
    Why is that no surprise?

What Happened to the Air
    Well there were so many currents in it after a time,
    so many streams of voices crisscrossing above
    the high pasture
    when she went out to feed the horses, gusts of ringing
    and buzzing against her skin. Sometimes near
    the biggest live oak
    she paused to feel a businessman in Waxahachie
    calling out
    toward his office in El Paso, a mother boarding
    a plane in Amarillo
    waking up her Comfort girl.