Self-Portrait With Bees (A Poem)

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH BEES

Entering the hive
is like falling down a black velvet staircase.

Off come the gloves, the hat, the veil.

Proudly, I pose for my portrait with sweetness,
my portrait with pain.

January 17, 2010

The morning walk uphill in deep, new snow:
On which dead honeybees are scattered like sunflower hulls—

Upon this field of white that radiates absence &
presence, dead bees form the patterned language

that tells us: Deep inside the January hive,
the colony is still alive.

—Gerry Gomez Pearlberg

A Poem Is Like A Social Wasp

10/22/09

A vespid alights
on the latex-white puddle
of melted vanilla—
desperate for October’s stolen flower.

—Gerry Gomez Pearlberg

"Bees and busy people."

Been reading the great & strange Philip Whalen lately, & encountered this gem on nature's simultaneities, which can best be enjoyed for its crackling sound effects & pools of meaning by reading aloud:

FOR ALBERT SAIJO

Fireweed now—
Burnt mountain day
Sunny crackle silence bracken
Huckleberry silver logs bears
Bees and busy people.

Rainy mountain years
Trees again—
Green gloom fern here
Moss duff sorrel
Deer sleep.

Tree fire people weed:
Bright and dark this mountain ground.


by Philip Whalen
(Zen poet &—can you tell?—college roommate of Gary Snyder)

Bonus Track: Whalen (center) with friends Ginsberg & Burroughs, way back when.

The Bee Pasturage of Early Spring

It be the Spring Equinox today, so it's officially time to share this vintage ode to the springtime flowers from which bees forage nectar and pollen at this time of year.

"First the gray willow's glossy pearls they steal,
Or rob the hazel of its golden meal,
While the gay crocus and the violet blue
Yield to the flexible trunk ambrosial dew."

—from The Honey Bee: Its Natural History, Physiology, and Management,
by Edward Bevan (1843)

A Haiku

Doing a bit of desperately needed office-cleanup today and found this little haiku offering, which I wrote last May:

Sunset Park subway:
A bumblebee checks me out
We see eye to eye

Winter Thoughts

"Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop."—Ovid

Thinking today of the bees clustered in their hive
encircling their precious queen,
beneath the tarp and some snow,
dining on their honey,
beating their tiny wings for warmth,
awaiting the idea of a thing called spring.

Song of the Queen Bee by E.B. White

Song of the Queen Bee

by E.B White

New Yorker Magazine 1945
“The breeding of the bee," says a United States Department of Agriculture bulletin on artificial insemination, has always been handicapped by the fact that the queen mates in the air with whatever drone she encounters.”

When the air is wine and the wind is free
and the morning sits on the lovely lea
and sunlight ripples on every tree
Then love-in-air is the thing for me
I’m a bee,
I’m a ravishing, rollicking, young queen bee,
That's me.
I wish to state that I think it’s great,
Oh, it’s simply rare in the upper air,
It’s the place to pair
With a bee.

Let old geneticists plot and plan,
They’re stuffy people, to a man;
Let gossips whisper behind their fan.
(Oh, she does?
Buzz, buzz, buzz!)
My nuptial flight is sheer delight;
I’m a giddy girl who likes to swirl,
To fly and soar
And fly some more,
I’m a bee.
And I wish to state that I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

There’s a kind of a wild and glad elation
In the natural way of insemination;
Who thinks that love is a handicap
Is a fuddydud and a common sap,
For I am a queen and I am a bee,
I’m devil-may-care and I’m fancy-free,
The test tube doesn't appeal to me,
Not me,
I’m a bee.
And I’m here to state that I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

Mares and cows, by calculating,
Improve themselves with loveless mating,
Let groundlings breed in the modern fashion,
I’ll stick to the air and the grand old passion;
I may be small and I’m just a bee
But I won’t have science improving me,
Not me,
I’m a bee.
On a day that’s fair with a wind that’s free,
Any old drone is a lad for me.

I’ve no flair for love moderne,
It’s far too studied, far too stern,
I’m just a bee—I’m wild, I’m free,
That’s me.
I can’t afford to be too choosy;
In every queen there’s a touch of floozy,
And it’s simply rare
In the upper air
And I wish to state
That I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

Man is a fool for the latest movement,
He broods and broods on race improvement;
What boots it to improve a bee
If it means the end of ecstasy?
(He ought to be there
On a day that’s fair,
Oh, it’s simply rare.
For a bee.)

Man’s so wise he is growing foolish,
Some of his schemes are downright ghoulish;
He owns a bomb that’ll end creation
And he wants to change the sex relation,
He thinks that love is a handicap,
He’s a fuddydud, he’s a simple sap;
Man is a meddler, man’s a boob,
He looks for love in the depths of a tube,
His restless mind is forever ranging,
He thinks he’s advancing as long as he’s changing,
He cracks the atom, he racks his skull,
Man is meddlesome, man is dull,
Man is busy instead of idle,
Man is alarmingly suicidal,
Me, I am a bee.

I am a bee and I simply love it,
I am a bee and I’m darn glad of it,
I am a bee, I know about love:
You go upstairs, you go above,
You do not pause to dine or sup,
The sky won’t wait—it’s a long trip up;
You rise, you soar, you take the blue,
It’s you and me, kid, me and you,
It’s everything, it’s the nearest drone,
It’s never a thing that you find alone.
I’m a bee,
I’m free.

If any old farmer can keep and hive me,
Then any old drone may catch and wife me;
I’m sorry for creatures who cannot pair
On a gorgeous day in the upper air,
I’m sorry for cows that have to boast
Of affairs they’ve had by parcel post,
I’m sorry for a man with his plots and guile,
His test-tube manner, his test-tube smile;
I’ll multiply and I’ll increase
As I always have—by mere caprice;
For I am a queen and I am a bee,
I’m devil-may-care and I’m fancy-free,
Love-in-air is the thing for me,
Oh, it’s simply rare
In the beautiful air,
And I wish to state
That I’ll always mate
With whatever drone I encounter.

Found Poem

MY FRIEND JOHN WRITES
I'm reading Don Quixote—
“In the fissures of rocks
and the hollows of trees
diligent and clever bees
established their colonies,
freely offering to any hand
the fertile harvest of their sweet labor.”
I wonder if they freely offered.

Honeybee on a Fallen Star

The flower fell.
But that didn't stop
the bee.

A Little Ditty

A friend of my mom's had this to share, and I couldn't resist passing it along...

The queen bee was a busy old soul…
who had no time for birth control

And that is why
in times like these
there so many Sons-of-B’s.

Clover+Bee+Emily

To make a prairie it takes clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.
—Ms. Emily Dickinson

What It Is

Close Encounter

The Bumblebee (a.k.a. the Humble Bee)

This week, the bumblebees have been all over the place; everything that doesn't moan with honeybees buzzes with bumbles.

I like the joke on the bumblebee;
His wings are too small to hold him.
He really can't fly, professors agree
But nobody's ever told him.
--Anon

(The poem is cited in a fabulous book about honeybees called THE QUEEN MUST DIE: AND OTHER AFFAIRS OF BEES AND MEN by the wonderful Wm. Longgood. I highly recommend this book if you want an entertaining, informative read about the life and times of honeybees.)

Abuzz, Ablurr

I think that I shall never see
a thing as lovely as a bee.(With apologies to Joyce Kilmer.)