Summer at the Orphanage
The bee dozes in a lily’s yellow throat.
July sighs
over the convent’s garth, where an old
linden blooms & bees hover
low — exhausted by their pollen loads.
I’m only five, & exhausted too: I know longing’s
weight in my lungs & legs,
so I shelter the bee,
in its buttery abundance, my shadow
a dome over the bloom.
At dusk, the chapel bell thorns the air. Swarms
of uniforms flock toward that bronze authority.
I’m alone. The courtyard is empty
& large as absence suddenly —
silent as my mother,
dark as her back & black car
when she drove away,
flicking her ashes out the window.
Light dims. I fear the bee might
get caught here in this nunnery, like me —
so I stroke its belly from under the bloom’s throat & lazy, slow,
cloaked & golden like mother’s jewelry,
it’s back again, & dusk oozes from the linden.
I’d like to tell you something happened then –
that there was an epiphany, that the bee
taught me something.
But it didn’t.
It didn’t even land
on my hand or leave its sting in me
before it soared — an ashen speck —
high over the walls —
& was gone.