Carol Dorf
Ignore Them: Memorial Day
Bees swarmed by our front door – I ignored them – the way I had been taught
I guided my child to do the same – Ignore them my mother would say
Meaning bees – meaning wasps – meaning boys and their calls
A few hours later the bees found all the holes in our old brick chimney
For weeks a beekeeper visited to capture the swarm –
The new queen ignored an attractive box ten feet away
Little gates prevented worker bees from re-entering after they left to forage –
Later I learned which neighbor kept bees – backyard domesticated bees
Another misguided ecological initiative –
Like wood-burning fireplaces raining down particulates
Bees found ways of sliding through the cracks in my child’s windows
Dying drying on the floors
There was an ending — all wrong – with an evil smelling exterminator
Wandering around the foundation with a tub of powders
Hot sunny days before the fogs arrived
Carol Dorf has received fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation, Zoeglossia, and the Napa Valley Writers Conference. Their writing appears on the Poetry Foundation website, in several chapbooks, and in journals that include Pleiades, About Place,Cutthroat,The Dodge, Feminist Studies, and Scientific American. Founding poetry editor of Talking Writing, they taught math and writing in Berkeley USD, as well as at museums and conferences.