The Guards

Thou hast made us for Thyself...

Augustine

We get a stock of bees for food.

I concentrate yet am afraid

Of options gone, there's always been

Distraction. What is that thing

The dark thing certainly not wrong

That holds the centre and from which

All our attentions always switch?

The swarm drops on the laid-out cloth.

A few crawl to the wooden fort

We left, a hive. I watch. Untaught

Then like a moving heap of earth

All take possession of that tang -

And waxy place. Then ten weeks from

Their slit the mindless workers come

For pollen masticated crude

For young in each sealed loaded cell.

Then swarm. Invaders are destroyed.

Drones die purged on the landing-sill.

On time in gauntlets and the veil

I sugar where ten thousand live

And take the lid up from the hive.

A detail of the bees swings up

And peels off left to get me; dip,

Savage the gloves, sting leather in

Their suicidal ire and die.

In suit and net and warily

I thieve their honey-frames by hand,

Vats of brown liquid churned like sand.

What do they guard, with this fierce work

Vibrating so hard those weak wings

To direct scent? We puff more smoke.

The brood-chamber is black as hell.

But who and what you are wee queen

Eludes still, like my childhood, clean

As now decked out in this white shell.