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  • Bees, Honeycombs, Honey
  • Hayan Charara (bio)

Bees, thousands and thousands,surviving in a hiveunder the soffit; bees,honeycombs, and honey,and dampness, and old woodsticky in the sunlight;

and the beekeeper's hand,carefully, and slowly,vacuuming, and taking;the bees tumbling, gently,into the makeshift hive;honeybees, and honeycombs,

and honey, glistening;honey, the only foodthat will not spoil; honey,pulled from the pyramids,still sticky, and sweet,thousands of years later;

I may not believe, butI want to; and the beesbefore my eyes are nowdisappearing; bees Godin the Qur'an inspiredto build homes in mountains [End Page 17]

and trees; bees that built homesin the trees near the gravein Detroit; and the beesin Jerusalem's graves;bees in every city,and in every age; bees,

honey, and honeycombs,through disaster afterdisaster; bees building,and scouting, and dancing;bees mating, protecting,and attacking; the bees

are now disappearing,and dying; and the beesthe beekeeper cannotsave are dying but stillguarding the empty hive,butting their heads against

my children, boys who willgrow to be men and buildtheir own homes, now dippingfingers into honeydarkening on the ground;they are dying; the hive

is gone; the queen is gone;thousands and thousands, gone;but the bees will come back,and the hive will come back;if not here, then elsewhere;and there will be more bees

making more honeycombs,more honey, and more bees; [End Page 18] and one day all the beeswill be gone; gone, and gone;honeycombs, and houses,gone; and trees, gone; oak, elm,

birch, gone; all trees, flowers,gone; and birds, leaves, branches,cicadas, and crickets,grasshoppers, ants, worms, gone;and cities, and rivers,big cities, small cities,

big rivers, small rivers,gardens, and homes; and homes;the bees will be gone, andonly their honey willsurvive, and we will notbe around to taste it. [End Page 19]

Hayan Charara

Hayan Charara's three poetry books are Something Sinister (2016), The Sadness of Others (2006), and The Alchemist's Diary (2001). His children's book, The Three Lucys (2016), received the New Voices Award Honor. He also edited Inclined to Speak (2008), an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. Born in Detroit, Michigan, to Arab immigrants, he lived in New York City for many years and now makes his home in Houston, Texas.

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