A bell is tolling over the river
from where and for whom is
not known. Fortunately,
the orchid in the window’s
afternoon sunlight, leads us
serenely into May.

The bee-box scattered on the ground
like the ruins of Troy
after the Greeks have sailed
for home with their loot, human
and otherwise. The beekeeper
needs to buy a new queen.

Without delay, the Mycenaeans
returned home, unlike Odysseus
but Agamemnon’s triumph
was brief—wife-murdered,
death-crowned, he was soon entombed,
in a limestone beehive.