*This December, I am reblogging some of the more popular poems and articles that I have posted in the course of the past year. The backstory and introductory essay that accompanied the original posting of this poem can be accessed at https://oudeis2005.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/writing-201-poetry-assignment-4-animals-honey-an-essay-on-animal-poetry-and-an-ongoing-effort-to-produce-a-bee-poem/ I have been working on a companion piece entitled Sugar for some time now and hope to publish it soon.*

Honey

I Birth

As a thought is born in us

when we slip a sweet spoon of honey

between our lips

and ancient smells

incite instinct and reflection

in equal measure

and inspire us to grow in words and thought;

so the young queen

is nourished by her chemical laborers

and awakes half-drunk

on the rich jelly and affection

that has been pumped into her.

Proud, she’s stirred by fragile destiny;

stings to death her unborn sisters

and with a pregnant pause

injects the same venom

into her flagging mother;

and with this act of euthanasia

inaugurates her own ascension.

Ageing workers laud and coddle her.

Enthused, celebrate with scents

this new infant; and the queen

relaxes unthinkingly

into this luxury of destined power-

like baby burbling in cradle.

II       Work

If bees could think, the old maids

would remember the dear murdered queen,

in the babyish ointments exuded

by the new; but, for nostalgia’s sake,

they rush off to mine from flowers’ mouths

the nectar that feeds her

that they might taste again

that flavour that made them well

and whole; and in their last days

that are numbered, if they knew it,

spare no effort to provide

the queen’s needs and, thereby, their own.

Being mortal, drop dead on the wing

of work. High on queen-sweat feel

saved as they faint in death; keep

at it till the queen is ready to leave her

sweet perfumed nest for a while. She

yawns and shakes pollen from her wings

and sets out on her brief single Odyssey.

 

III     War

But if a bee that has a different smell

strays into their air-space; the patient wet-

nurses transform themselves into squadrons

and sally forth to repel what –

if they could think – they would see

as the aggressor. Blessed by nature

with a gun embedded in their bodies;

but doomed to die if ever they have to use it;

they circle round the aggressor;

and, if need be, sacrifice their intestines,

for the sake of a decisive strike.

And the wounded, reduced to mere individuals,

are left to die in the no-man’s-land –

the desert beyond the home.

And when some return to celebrate

their victory, their joy is tempered

by the knowledge that one day they

too may stray and suffer a similar

fate. And, if they were human,

they would sing of the fatal sorrow

of being lost in a foreign land and

praise the joys of home; bunched

around their warm dear familiar queen.

 

IV     Death and Sex

If bees had instruments and flags,

the horns would be blasted and the bunting

raised, the day the queen stirs herself

from the passive luxury of her survival

to survey – for one time only –

the real outside world. Flanked by

loyal body-guards, she launches

her buxom self into the air

and flirts with the cultivated drones,

who flock about her – desperate for sex.

Trained to love one only, they

have spent the spring of their lives

shunning the plain workers.

The queen is the only true beautiful thing

they have seen in their whole slight lives;

and they flock around her, like scientists

around a new truth. Eager to lap the sweet

forbidden juices from her back; and sink

themselves to the hilt into her deathly body.

Half knowing, if they could entertain a thought,

that this first pleasure will be their last

and, more excited for that, thrust their seed

more vigorously into her; drawing half their bellies

out with it. And fall back in a unique ecstasm

to drown – wriggling and exquisitely –

in the two dimensions of the putrid earth.

And those who fail, even in this only duty,

are left alienated in the three dimensions

of the air to harp out their famished lust

serenading the meaninglessness of death.

 

V       Winter

Winter is drawing in and the workers

stream back to the hive to warm

their queen with a slow flapping of wings.

 

VI     Culture and Nature

Though spring must come for the bees

and a new queen settle into the confines

of her prison-cell; and new workers awake

from non-being to work themselves sterile

and sick for the drug the queen exudes

and they crave; and a new crop of drones

arise to preen and prepare themselves for

the triple festival of jubilee, wedding-feast

and funeral; and, though, there is no escape

from the cycle, unless the bee could pause rapt

for a while before the beauty of a flower

on a brief holiday from economic production;

yet, we, who keep and watch them,

by producing honey, knowledge and art,

can extract from their tragic annual lives

a quintessence that we take from them;

but does not cease to be theirs;

a magic melting together of subject and object,

complete, when we recognise that as they

are trapped in their cycle of nectar and reproduction;

sex and drugs; so we, tread our own special mill

of reason and language. They provide sweetness and example for us;

in return, we confer meaning upon them.