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  • Funnel Where the Light Might Enter
  • Christine Robbins (bio)

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

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.

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