Page 43 - WTP VOl. XII #1

The Language of Bees
On the Nod
Winter damp, the wood storms bulge and shrink. Our vision can’t get
past snug flowers that the frost
deals glass. A lit monitor
erratically sanding a dune over memory colludes with the silence.
Limbs folded, musing on dustmotes like barflies after hours who can't quite wobble into sleep, we boot up
for the avalanche.
News pours in enveloped with snow. The radio grinds static.
Atrocities and falsified elections bend like dreams during blizzard. Blood weeping from the murdered
could be ink penned by a distant friend when there is no hand to answer,
no will to shovel out from under.
from Ember Days the baldfaced hornet sips nectar.
The shag rug of florets covers her feet.
Mated already, surviving,
she’ll overwinter in litter
then pulp wood in her mouth
for a pendant gray paper nest.
The larvae will close their own cells.
The year carries its freight,
its September. At the gambrel
of goldenrod plumes, she rocks
in the sun, pine fragrance stirring. The slick yellow and black
stripes of her abdomen pulse, bent to her mouth music.
On the rooftop garden over the gallfly’s home
Gilliland, of Ithaca NY, has authored two award-winning collections: The Devil’s Fools and The Ruined Walled Castle Garden. Her most recent book is Ember Days (Codhill Press, 2024). Her poems have also appeared in the recent an- thologies Rumors Secrets & Lies: Poems on Pregnancy, Abortion & Choice and Wild Gods: The Ecstatic in Contemporary Poetry and Prose. “The Language of Bees” was first published in The Emily Dickinson Awards Anthology 7 (2002). Gilliland is a frequent contributor to WTP.
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