The Apiary at Night
It wasn’t much to care for them,
letting the grass grow wild, we’d lift
the panel trays to check for damage,
the honeycomb expanding there
so delicately, and cut out
delicately too—we stored it,
jar to jar, on running shelves,
our small diary of light.
Young and loved, sometimes we lay
all morning on the bed, listening
to their whirring signature;
a strange dream now the bees have left—
drama-less and slow—time passed
and the noise fell back to the calling
from those birds roosting in the forest,
warm from the nest. Is this the mid-life?
The apiary in the garden,
empty as a church, and past it
the woods: half noise, half bowl of silence;
the window wide as the world, legs touching,
we listen to the sound that isn’t there
then listen to the sound that is.
Notes:
This poem is part of a portfolio of work on the occasion of Edwin Morgan’s centenary. Read the introduction by James McGonigal here.
Source: Poetry (July/August 2020)