The Scythe

In the summer on Sunday    afternoons with a wire mask, he would take his turn

checking on the bees    and the honey in the hive near the garden of the White House.

Sometimes the gardener   would quiet the scythe to watch the tall man in a black suit

looming over the bees,   whispering, and coaxing telling them about the moon

and the Seven Seas.   There was a calm in his voice, a mysterious something to which

many could relate.   A timbre to the words like a handshake if it were spoken.

Slowly the bees will   congregate. His aide will traipse through the shimmering

walls of heat opening   the heavy doors to fetch him a sweating musical glass of ice water.

Soon he will lay across   a stranger’s bed moaning, dying bloody and stunned.

For now though a man   kneels down working in the sun— his chest covered with bees.