The Beekeepers
Michelle Lynch
Outside our make-shift tent
the bees are dying;
royal blood disordered
colonies collapsing.
We take long, deep tokes, trying
to pull Gaian ancestors back to
abandoned woods, hoping to convince
them that this failure wasn’t
our fault.
I wonder aloud where we’ll go when
the Earth dies, crying like I sometimes
do when I realize all at once that
we’re losing.
You say you’ll build me a home
under the sea with a special room
for the last surviving bees, but then
we remember the halibut ghosts
haunting the North Atlantic –
the acid bleaching the coral blind.
You say you’ll bring me to
the Sea of Tranquility instead.
We’ll build a glass apiary and live
with the bees in the basalt valley
between the Lunar North peaks.
We’ll harvest oxygen from the soil
and make love to the sounds of hopeful
buzzing as the Earth rises by rote,
a long abandoned hive.
AUTHOR BIO
Michelle Lynch is an educator, writer, and photographer in the metro NYC area. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and has had her poetry published in kerning l a space for words, NonBinary Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Memoryhouse Magazine, San Pedro River Review, Quarterly Journal, Heron Tree Review, Lunch Ticket, among other lovely places.
JUDGE'S REMARKS
Poetry Judge
Allison Field Bell
Allison Field Bell is a multi-genre writer originally from northern California, but currently living in Utah.
MORE ABOUT ALLISON