The Swarm

1.
The buzz comes again this morning,
too familiar, a tingling in my buttocks
and back, my middle, my ribs.
Bees inhabit my body.

A poet I know says you don’t feel
anxiety in your butt but I do.
Every morning. As if my nerves
were plugged into my iPhone,

programmed to go off at 6 a.m.
Get up, they say and buzzing begins.
I cover my head with the sheet.
Dread sours my mouth and bees swarm.

2.
Before I was ever stung I loved
the small yellow pillows with wings
that hovered over clover. Now
bees are stealing away from us.

And have ladybugs obeyed
the rhyme and flown? The mantis,
almost never seen now in our yard,
with his long delicate arms,

is he, too, gone? Please, I pray
at night, unbeliever that I am,
driven to this last resort.
In the morning, bees buzz.

I would harbor them all if I could.
The swarmers and the borers.
The summer gorgers and the winter bugs
who creep into our house at night.

3.
When Becky was small she stood
in our yard, and caught the inchworms
that fell into her hands. It wasn’t
that long ago. A river of caterpillars

flowed down Highview Avenue
every spring. Miner bees nested
in the lawn. Tiny Andrena, pollinator
of violets, azaleas, and wild plums

The smallest North American bee
who does not bite or sting.
Still, they spoiled the grass
and frightened the kids.

So we poisoned them.
Every spring when the girls
were small. Please, I say at night.
In the morning, I buzz.

Dance in Twenty Moves

Robin on the deck takes flight but gains no height.

My plan—keep all the body parts I was born with
but that plan has no legs.
How I kicked at four months. Swimmer in a capsule of flesh.
Doctor Goral shows me my femur alight with inflammation—
the whole head of the bone flattening.

I’m at a holiday party and Lucy (who I just met) chatters.
about an old woman whose hip completely collapsed.
I feel myself wincing as she talks.
The pain so bad they rush her to the hospital.
They do an emergency replacement.
If your hip collapses does your leg fall off?

My Becky gives me a cane for Christmas—
wood, with the handle carved to look like a dove.
Remember running, one leg pushes the ground away,
the other, the other. One bead short of flying.

O broken necklace whose charms puddle on the floor,
O dragon’s tooth, O fire needle, O open flame.
When your right hip sears from your butt to your knee—
turn to your left.
When your left hip burns down your thigh—
turn over again.
Repeat 500 times.

I drop the dove cane and the tip of the beak breaks off.
Pain, your bloom stinks like the carrion blossom.
I will never make peace with you.
I find the robin’s body with its broken wing still in place—
something has already chewed it.

what dreams may come

my brother calls my name the day he’s committed
i hear him from my bed 3 thousand miles away

ellen ellen ellen wayne says

who set the tape to loop? the moment repeating

wayne in the squad car
the stink of rancid french fries cracked vinyl
white stuffing spilling out

my mother babbles how they hated to
how they had to who they called

when we were small my arm always draped
around wayne’s shoulders

little mother father calls me

i see his ghost in the supermarket
turning the corner at the end of an aisle

what happens when the dreamer dies?

will I remember how he came to me
between the meats and frozen peas

i mother everyone wayne and baby sharon
caterpillars I lift off the driveway

two yellow sunfish
i catch and keep in a green glass bowl
how their bodies drifted to the surface

i dream of them every night

Through the Hole in the Hedge

I find a child swaddled in the fine tasseled grass
here where wild mint blooms on the verge
here where the path twists down to the swale

his head a globe of silver fluff
airy as any dandelion clock
he has no weight

I hold his face close to my own
and hear how he hums
a sound like the buzz of an infant bee

his face a star with a pointed chin
he smells of gardenia and wild wood rose
I nest him gently against my chest

wrap him close and follow the trail
where red fruit hangs like a thousand suns
and moonflower vines garland the trees

here a pallet of rue and pennyroyal blooms
I nibble a sprig and festoon my hair
heat needles my mouth and disquiets my womb

I lay him down and gather the drupe
Cherries that taste of rubies and wine
stain my fingers the color of new-made blood

shivers jitter my back
to the top of my spine
branches clack and the woods begin to chime

and where is my star child my infant my dear?
I scrabble through leaves
but no one is there

Luna

I yearn for her, but she doesn’t return my regard. I write odes,
she refuses to hear. She is Mother, Sister.
My own cannot undo their dying. More faithful than they,
Moon lounges in her starry bower, returns to me again.

I must have her. I snatch her out of the sky,
wrestle her under my shirt. She wriggles so fiercely
I drop her in a box, seal the top. It presses itself
against the front door. I lock her in the bathroom,
barricade the door. She bounces from sink to tub,
jumps about like a yearling doe trapped in a cage.

I try to sleep, but in the darkest hour I hear her wail.
A person cannot bear it when the moon shudders
with sorrow. I fling open the door, hold her in the hollow
between chin and chest, cradle her the way I held
my daughter when she hurt.
Moon lies on my shoulder and weeps. I stroke her,
croon, Luna, Luna.

But I err. A straight path lies from here to the window.
She bashes my cheek, bolts—
punches through glass,
leaps back to sky. My chest buzzes and my cheek burns
from her blow, but my happiness cannot be eclipsed
for tonight I held the moon in my arms.

Ellen Aronofsky Cole is an actor, puppeteer, teaching artist, and poet. Her books include her full-length collection, Notes from the Dry Country, (Mayapple Press, 2019) and Prognosis, (Finishing Line Press, 2011.) Her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Gargoyle, Little Patuxent Review, Potomac Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Fledgling Rag, The Washington Post, New Verse News, and elsewhere. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband Brian, and a small, feisty parrot named Haiku.

Image: High Hedges by Bob Harvey, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons