All the Wild Swarm
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On Three Creeks Road past the prison and small inlets the church seems a long way off
as the funeral line turns down the drive, not far from the congregation of sandstone
in the field. What hovers there is not only spirit
but hundreds, maybe thousands, of carpenter bees— their striped bodies
dimming the tower, its ducts blooming with honey and hives.
Their shimmer is akin to dusk light and their sound, the low murmur of a rising flock.
Myths say they are what’s left of the body, born of entrails or tears. Here, they amass
near everything not resting and brush my cheek as I move up the dirt path,
arms filled with a heavy wreathe, fragrant and rife with nectar. [End Page 776]
The horde of bees trails the procession, messengers
sent to worry each body, serving as shadowland bridge,
moving past history to the open plot where the blossoms
come to rest, where all the wild swarm soon will. [End Page 777]
Remica L. Bingham, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, is author of Conversion, a collection that won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. Her work has also appeared in such periodicals and anthologies as New Letters, PMS, Gulf Coast, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, and The 100 Best African American Poems. Before becoming the Writing Competency Coordinator at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia, she completed the MFA in creative writing from Bennington College. A Cave Canem fellow, she has attended the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop.
