From the 20th Anniversary Issue of Tar River Poetry

PATRICK BIZZARO

IMAGINING THE BEES

--for Charley and Debbie Gordon

I have never held anything
long enough to be stung by it.
But once I followed a bee keeper
to the back of his barn
and watched him duck into
a small screened room.
He wore a tent over his head,
gloves on his hands.

There were thousands, maybe
millions, of bees, small bees
the size of tears, hugging their queen
like wool.

When the keeper reached for the comb,
it slipped to the floor.
Hundreds of bees leaped to his face,
maybe a dozen danced beneath the net
and to the man's eyes.
The keeper's arms swung to his face.
He had already said
there's no pain like stinging eyes.

He ran past me, slamming the door
behind him, to a hose hanging
beside the barn.  He sprayed water
over his eyes, washing the bees away.
His eyes were closing when he told me.
This is nothing.  Not real tears.
Nothing at all.

Still, I know it comes down to this:
we hold something so closely
it breaks through our skin.

There are people I would hold this way.
And when Iím stung around the eyes,
I enter this room of bees
where pain shows beneath
the net of my smile
and my wooden eyelids
learn how to dance.

--Fall 1981

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Copyright © 1981 by Patrick Bizzaro.