Sean Borodale
18TH DECEMBER: SNOW AND INTERVENTION
18TH DECEMBER: SNOW AND INTERVENTION
Unscrew the cap, invert and squeeze
this bottle between frames into bee-gap.
(Water, saccharose, citric, oxalic, formic acids
& propolis extract,
diverse, unspecified, essential oils of what?)
A stagger of waiting
leans over the hour's clock-hand's seconds.
Jutting harp strings of light,
ligaments of noise take flight.
It's like a head being tapped out:
the weaker bees mass and fan at the door's ledge,
become a gangplank of intent to leave.
They slow-wing to the snow-floor.
The blackbirds are interested,
landing an assembly to constrict this unfortunate rink.
For an hour of daylight
the hive clears out the bric-a-brac of infested.
Before I go, I smear thin belts of their own honey back
along brood-frame bars.
Hangs of it plumb into the dark.
How did it go, this song of chemistry?
It's like a dream it should not be so,
bees misjudging the gaunt-of-heat world.
A hundred bees dead at a touch - that is not much
of thousands in a box,
but, black on the snow they go,
dropped bag of dead luck.
