The orchard bees will live six weeks, gathered
at the heads of purple clover. How precise
the pile of the dead carried outside by daughter
after daughter. The hive is in love with sacrifice

for the love of order. How beautiful
the comb is hung in its golden glister!
Now their tattered wings are weary and dull
and the throng of the hum is a whisper.

The old queen’s time is over. The new queen, fed and nursed,
sleeps inbred in her bed of royal jelly.
Slowly, the old queen, lost, careens off-course
– what good, the basswood, to her at sea?

Even the too-full moon goes down degree by degree.
Illusion of the horizon: who hasn’t drowned at sea?