We remember 'em, as industrious
as before. Buttercups and scotch
pots bumbling hiveward, down on

the roof's underside. Just mesh
and wire grids dripping down little
excesses of their sugared labor.

I couldn't have known that I'd miss
'em and their black and yellow
targets and their sacrificial offenses.

Their gliding ziplines still gleaming
and sweetening August sunstreams.
No petal gone too still and too

unbuzzed against their slippery
rhythms. They charm with warm
basslines as the natural footwomen

they are. Only cross they count
is their queen, though they derive
no known monarchy; only then

can we imagine our wasted troubling
flew around and around as this:
Nectar parks, construction honey,

globs of browned glucose, all of it.
The whole hive whose weight's
bearing down a gold kingdom.

© Mav P.