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.
By David Selzer