- Funnel Where the Light Might Enter
Half the colony Spirals from a box on the roof, funnels To a branch on the tree—
Swarming The unfathomed light. Bees settle
On the hundred-year tree Where they hang from a branch And they spill. The apples
Aren’t ripe—they’re knotted In the branches,
Pitted in the light. Pitted Like a primitive eye. I’m inside, behind the window, Coffee on the sill. I’ve read
The morning paper. I watch You try to catch the swarm,
I’ve read the morning news. And if they come for her By day. Immolate her By their hands—
I say I can’t imagine, but the horror is I can. And in the fall, The apples will loosen. They’ll offer something sweet
For the sake of spreading. I watch You watch the light. I do not leave [End Page 166]
The window. I watch Your shadow on the bees. Light pours into the window, Pours onto the glass, refracts.
And if she’s still alive and set On fire by their hands— I cannot bear her witness, I need to look away. I will
Be hollowed One of these days. I’ve seen A hive at its end.
And if She is burned to death in the street and if They come for her in day, Their cameras alight, recording Her harrowing—
Light bends through the glass, Through a hole in the wall And all the window keeps Inside. The hive
Swarms by half. Refracts And spreads and spreads itself.
I am not me alone. Just like her, I Burn. And worse—I am a human
And a human lights the flame. You try to gather the bees And a hornet waits in the eves.
It waits for what’s unguarded— The hive abandoned by half.
The bald faced hornet’s A death mask in light, Its face Both black and white— [End Page 167]
Day and night, waiting To spread itself. I watch You gather the bees. I think
I hold a place for her In the recess of me. Her story Isn’t only its end.
But if, in the street, A woman is burned in the day, And a man does nothing But record with a camera’s light—
She’s been left unguarded, Half a world away.
I read the morning paper And I know it is me too. I am the meat. I am the tool.
Do I serve by watching Or by looking away?
Light pours along the holes In the hundred-year tree— Summer holes where the bees Don’t enter.
Light throws shadow On the graying wood, on holes Where a longing Might enter. Light
Through the hole in my eye. Light
On half the empty Hive. Light on the swarming Colony and on The morning paper.
Some things, I’d rather Face in the dark. And if [End Page 168]
I am taken slowly By half and if something Hollows me quietly,
Hunger moves but hunger Isn’t cruel. The hornet courts The vacancy
Left by the swarming bees. And I’m The watcher. While you Built the boxes And you found the bees.
The honey was siphoned— The bees Are a languid rise. And they spread
Themselves, They leave themselves behind.
The swarm is brighter And seems more alive for blooming In a dying tree.
Alive as a closing eye. [End Page 169]
Christine Robbins has an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Georgia Review, the Los Angeles Review, and Missouri Review online. She lives and works in Olympia, Washington.