Singing at the Execution
Bees crawl through the comb of crumbling mortar,
their hive nested against the fireplace chimney,
silent as honey at night but, every day,
three or four cling to the bedroom window.
They hotly buzz, their bodies battering at the glass.
I kill them easily. Next day,
sixteen beat at the window. Again
I knock them to the floor, where they lie
stunned and dying. Forty more come, then sixty.
I check the Yellow Pages for a name.
He comes after dusk when the bees have all returned,
fills the hive with poison.
As night ascends, stars flinging small darts of light,
the bees grow boisterous,
sing like divas as they die, nerves burning without fire.
Those nearest the inner wall
crawl between old bricks by the hundreds.
They jerk and spasm, too damaged to live,
my bedroom floor a humming sea while the night
answers with its grasshopper scratch, its tree toad harrumph.
First Published in The Connecticut
Review
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