The Calm Logic of Bees
I like to memory myself into this field
with the bee song that splashes open for me
my youth, the drone back in the blackberry
bushes where if you were small you would
crouch and avoid the thorns and think about
violence exploding the house right then.
This is not there, but both places are the same
with bees who sing now and just as loud.
Bees will sing you quiet inside and out
if you listen to what they are saying.
Their song is not a threat; it is sense.
It tells you there is love, that you shouldn’t doubt
you deserve it. Hide there child, watching
the house quietly. Let yourself untense.
John Brantingham is currently and always thinking about radical wonder. He is a New York State Council on the Arts Grant Recipient for 2024, and he was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-three books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction.
