They arrived abruptly, late in the morning

on a proper summer’s day – windows and doors

open to steep the house in a sun-warmed

stillness. We heard a sudden roaring,

an almost metallic whirring as if some

giant dynamo had just been started up.

The air above the garden was darkening,

gyrating with a swarm of wild bees. We felt

bewildered, apprehensive, ignorant

about beings so familiar, so mundane –

from when daisies and magnolias first bloomed,

shortly before small dinosaurs became birds.

Eventually – in what might have been

moments – they disappeared beneath

the branches of the Japanese cherry.

When we looked under the leafy awning

they had attached themselves to the trunk,

become one still mass around the queen,

broad then tapered like a roughcast urn.

Over the next days we checked frequently.

They remained, unmoved, enigmatic.

And then – perhaps one dawn while we were sleeping –

they must have left, leaving a white, urn-shaped

honeycomb adhering to the bark,

its hexagonal cells of beeswax empty

of pupae, pollen and honey. We felt

abandoned, and chosen.