On the Life Cycle of Honey Bees
Drone:
There was a time
I lived in a house
in a city that lived
in a thicket of ice.
In the winter, no one came.
Our cupboards, full of sand--
our open mouths, open
to catch, to catch.
Queen:
My grandmother told me
there was a time
when the skies in winter were bomb
raids of transparent crows.
The air was cold, there was the threat
of the birds and the leaves,
but an absence of winged things.
It was a time like a snow globe,
she said. The house we lived in
she bought for cash.
Worker:
There was a time
when cash meant
something.
Other than the ice
that freezes the day
in half—one piece makes you
richer, the other brings you sleep.
In that time,
the region in our city
changed from bone
desert to tundra. Glass skies ripe.
& undercurrents of big beautiful fish
& the tales folks
tell about them.
My grandmother did not
tell tales of water
or truth through the winters,
through the cupboards,
but netted the lies coming
through our teeth.
Slick like a whale's
when swallowing kelp.
That was when the bombs
fell, or the leaves, only
when the dark broke out
like a loon, or a coot--
raving and contaminated.
--JULY WESTHALE
There was a time
I lived in a house
in a city that lived
in a thicket of ice.
In the winter, no one came.
Our cupboards, full of sand--
our open mouths, open
to catch, to catch.
Queen:
My grandmother told me
there was a time
when the skies in winter were bomb
raids of transparent crows.
The air was cold, there was the threat
of the birds and the leaves,
but an absence of winged things.
It was a time like a snow globe,
she said. The house we lived in
she bought for cash.
Worker:
There was a time
when cash meant
something.
Other than the ice
that freezes the day
in half—one piece makes you
richer, the other brings you sleep.
In that time,
the region in our city
changed from bone
desert to tundra. Glass skies ripe.
& undercurrents of big beautiful fish
& the tales folks
tell about them.
My grandmother did not
tell tales of water
or truth through the winters,
through the cupboards,
but netted the lies coming
through our teeth.
Slick like a whale's
when swallowing kelp.
That was when the bombs
fell, or the leaves, only
when the dark broke out
like a loon, or a coot--
raving and contaminated.
--JULY WESTHALE