Scene with Lake and Bees
       

Two men stand knee-deep in lake water,
lake at their backs, in front of them
lakeshore, feeble beach made of rock and dust,
some mud between the lap-lap of the water
and the hush-hush of mothers with toddlers—
tired, the mothers and the toddlers, from the day
that has spun itself around them and wrapped
them up in a gold-dust cocoon and dropped
them here, chrysalised, in late afternoon.
The men stand knee-deep in lake water
and survey the scene—Act IV, Scene 3:
a string of bees, stage right, hovering over sand
in one of the mucky spots between rocks.
The bees hang there as if dangled, bob up
and down, don't really move much,
land on the sand, then alight. Honeybees,
one of the men says. An inch here, an inch there.
Any movement almost mechanical.
No, meat bees, says the other.
The water laps at their knees
with little kiss-kiss sounds. The water
treats the rocks the same way. The sun
touches the tops of trees, and the mothers
begin shaking out their blankets as if they
were new, damp wings. The bees,
wearing their tiny black and yellow costumes,
get what they can from the sand. The men wade
out of the water and into the dust. The lake
is not sorry to see them go. She'll take her
curtain call for tonight in an hour or two,
then let the moonlight have its way.

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Copyright © 2017 Gillian Wegener All rights reserved
from This Sweet Haphazard
Sixteen Rivers Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission