Complicated, the bond between hive and bee
hollow honeycomb hall-ed highway, hindering
despite rhythm and rite, it is the worker bee
droning downward, spinning spiral spindle wing.
Fraught the seamstress as she sews, hexagon
hill-falls encircling her kin. Again again as if
for dreaming, whence they stop again begin…
on tides of bus-i-ness come calling,
wax wanderer whittling white emptiness in the walls
what more is there for cloning, honey homestead.
Without it she is just a bee… a single pinhead on
the cornea, a miniature model, buzzing buzzing buzzing
behind the glass. Look at this be, this one unsatisfied bee.
And what of the hive. Without one single bee. Is still a hive
one humm quieter, one wing lighter, one mouth hungrier
for nectar not cradled but discarded in the flower.
The hive will survive, as will this bee.
She, still an insect; the hive, still a factory.
A hive manufacturing bees, bees manning the hive.
Little felt the farewell of one needler…
unless the murmur takes flight…
–ECW
ECW Poetry 