FOX CONTEMPLATES THE NATURE OF BEES

Let’s talk about them, bees.
Let’s talk about the honeycomb
that keeps them going, keeps them buzzing
around the queen who is their Core

huge and pure and full of sweet
so full and pure and huge she lives
to shape existence in the hive
that hums its own true universe

beyond lungs’ breath, beyond tongues’ taste,
gold and gold from hot sun’s gold,
the center of their conversation,
bold firm bodies, busy wings.

—

Image: “Bee Fascinated” by Debra Hall, via Grey Pepper Art. Appears by permission.

“Fox Contemplates the Nature of Bees” first appeared in The Ithaca Times in January 2013 and appears by permission of Kathryn Machan.

Katharyn Howd Machan, Professor of Writing at Ithaca College, holds degrees from the College of Saint Rose, the University of Iowa, and Northwestern University. Her poems 

have appeared in numerous magazines; in anthologies/textbooks such as The Bedford 

Introduction to Literature, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2013, Early 

Ripening: American Women’s Poetry Now, Literature, Sound and Sense, Writing Poems; 

and in 32 collections, most recently H (Gribble Press, 2014) and Wild Grapes: Poems of 

Fox (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Former director of the Feminist Women’s Writing 

Workshops, Inc., in 2012 she edited Adrienne Rich: A Tribute Anthology (Split Oak 

Press).