Dance the occasion
Dance the gorgeous design
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Dance, Dance, While the Hive Collapses
Shared from the Poetry Foundation
Oh my, oh my, I lose myself
I study atlases and cirrus paths
in search of traces of it, of you
of that thing, of that song
I keep pressing my ear to the current
of air to hear ...
I hear it and it disappears
It was all I wanted to do in this life
to sense that phantom tap
on my nerves, to allow myself
to be hit by it, attacked, aroused
until, as if someone else, I arise
I dance my part in paradise
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I read that bees who’ve drunk
imidacloprid
can’t waggle to indicate
to others where the best
nectar is located
(you and I also long to map
for each other the sweetest
suck of sap)
Workers carry far less food
back to the waiting hive.
They wander, wobble
can’t bring their way
home alive
The imidacloprid-imbibed
can’t bring it back
to the colony.
Some hives collapse
entirely.
I desire to say that I, I
would do it differently
I would be the bee, bloomed
with pesticide
that still would shake out a wiggle
like the finger’s signature
on the iPad at checkout:
not quite you, but still identity
more like a wave than solid you
yet enough to signify:
There, there, in the far off field
spiked acanthus, trumpets of datura
in the abandoned lot
on the corner of International and High
the mystic assignation
the golden throat of light:
gorge, gorge, take
your fill, I would cry
before I too failed
and my bumbling body lay down to die
I’d dance my last dance
to rescue the hive
yes, I’d carry the amber whirrers
out alive ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Or not. Perhaps I too would succumb
to the corn syrup, chemical
piped into our supply.
(I, too, longing to find my
way to you,
would go off course.)
Alas. There is still melody,
rhythm, someone is streaking
out in air, droning
around the phonograph, which is the grooved
heart valve of the black vinyl
divine who is winding this universe.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Someone is dancing us.
Will it be you? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dance, dance, as the hive collapses
Dance, dance, while the colony disassembles
Dance the occasion
Dance the gorgeous design ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
inside the honey
of our lit up veins ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
between the stripes and streams
of these swift rays
Source: Poetry (January 2016)
TIFFANY HIGGINS is the author of And Aeneas Stares into Her Helmet (2009), selected by Evie Shockley as the winner of the 2008 Carolina Wren Press Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in the Massachusetts Review, Taos Journal of Poetry and Art, Prelude, Catamaran Literary Reader, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Audio recordings of her poems and commentary on poetics appear on the website, From the Fishouse.
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What an extraordinary poem! So much meaning and beauty. Will not think about hives and bees and the dance of our lives in quite the same way again. 🐝