Channeling My Inner Plath: Poetry Gong #12

Boarding Up the Bees


"If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”
- Einstein

The bees fill our chimney,
send their dead to the hearth
as a warning: such atonement
could be your reward, dried husks.

The Queen and her minions gaze
on our frail buzzing from papery cells
constructed among cracks
in the smokestack’s entrails.
Tossed Hell-ward, purified
by the absence of smoke
simple drones believe
there is no fire waiting below,
no barbed flames waiting
to lick lazy flight muscles.

Numb as honey-plundering moths
the sacrificial bees can not sting
the enemy within, the soot, ash,
bits of birds’ nest falling, crushing.

Blackened angels, forgive me
this plywood barricade, this dark
tarp blocking your exit. Your sweet
freedom follows the children’s breath.

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Responding to a statement I made, my friend Fred asked me if I was channeling my inner Plath. Fred is funny. He should have a blog. He used to. But he's big-time and can not reveal his wit without sacrificing his career. Not everyone gets Fred.

Thanks to him, I had this great line running through my head. I thought of Plath's bee poems. Then I thought of the time hundreds of half-dead bees were in our house, coming, it finally turned out, from the chimney. Even though I knew it was for the best, I felt bad when my husband boarded up the chimney flue. We don't use the fireplace, but the bees were. They had found a home, and we took it away. I know it was for the best.

Researching bees and sacrifice and cultures that sacrifice others was rife with poetic possibility. This poem, along with many others, does not have the oomph I want it to. Even I don't know exactly what I mean to say. And that is the problem.