When Honeybees
Were Everywhere
Once, honeybees covered the clover-carpeted
ground, their steady hum linked so closely
with the clovers’ heavy heads and thread-like
stems it could have been, instead, the language
of these fragrant flowers — perhaps what they
whispered to one another in the early morning
light on a summer day as the barefoot children
burst from their houses and the dogs began
to bark and the milkman with his thick-soled
boots tromped through the yards, and mothers
dragged their laundry baskets across the grass
while bees scattered and the clover, briefly
trampled, rose again — their pale, dew-damp
faces poised to receive the bees’ next kiss.
– Terri Kirby Erickson