Telling the Bees
(a Celtic ritual: informing the hives of a death in the house)
Yellow jackets are swarming
the sweet apples
fermenting in the orchard grass.
Sunbathing, I am stung
on the left foot, a welt rising
like a small thumbprint.
Half a century unspools,
and I remember.
At the Army Base in Frankfort
my sister and I made barefoot
trails through the long fields,
distinct in the damp morning
grass. Every morning we
forgot the shoes our mother
laid out by the door; all summer
we were stung heel to toe.
We caught the bees in Mason
jars, and built forts with sun
bleached lawn chairs.
The scotch broom bloomed
yellow as the bombers rose
and fell, filling the sky
with smoke and sound.
At dusk we would return,
leaving summer and jars
of bees at the door. Inside,
our mother lay in her dark
room, her white arms
emerging from the shadows.
Sometimes she sat at her desk
writing cruel letters to my father
that the Army censured before
sending on. She put a pushpin
in the globe so he would feel it
in Vietnam.
She became haunted in layers,
intricate as hives.
She walked the house at night,
talking to him in dark mirrors.
In the mornings the bees were
always dead at the bottom
of the glass.
If Any Magic Remains
It’s rained for days;
the sheep press under the spruce tree,
the goats shelter in the tin shed.
The smell of tractor oil and moldering hay
rises from the barn floor.
In the front pasture the alpaca is resting.
The ash from summer’s constant fires
washes in rivulets down her sides.
(This year smoke filled the house;
we closed the curtains
and tried not to breathe.)
Rising pools form in the low,
uneven ground, but she is unmoved.
She knows when the rain will cease,
knows too, what is passing away.
These creatures possess an old magic.
She’s taught me this:
I want to greet the gathering dark
on whatever high ground I can find.
If any magic remains in me,
I’ll invoke the beings of the air,
of the deep, of the forests and fields.
They are slowly leaving.
In some wordless way,
(their voices are like waves
or the beating of wings)
I’ll say
Wait.
our wise women endure;
They hear the roots thinking
below the forest floor,
They understand the small
tongues of the rain.
Stay,
fish will bring out the boats again.
Whales will sing in the tides,
trees will speak in moss and birdsong.
Tomorrow, if there is no dawn
we’ll navigate by shuttered stars.
After You Lose the First Child,
you’ll go in chains.
You’ll watch the others–even a whisper,
even a prayer, could slip between you.
Your shadow will follow them, hanging
from their heels; without a word
they’ll carry your wounds. All your life,
you’ll teach them what misery taught you.
You’ll whisper “you cannot trust,
not even each other”, though they
are only children sleeping.
You’ll warn them: “there is a sharp
tooth in every tender promise “
when they bring a lover to meet you.
You’ll say “no one will love you
more than I do”,
which is what they most fear.
When you won’t give up your chains,
which are wound ivy-like, through the bones
of your dead child, your living children will
leave you, but after the first loss,
you cannot grieve.
In the silence, in the mirror, you’ll say:
“be careful not to love again.
It’s a pit without a ladder,
it’s a wasp in a rose.
it’s been a prison since the first cradle”.
Kristin Roedell graduated from Whitman College (B.A. English 1984) and the University of Washington Law School (J.D. 1987). Her poetry has been published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, Switched on Gutenberg, Sierra Nevada Review, and Amoskeag. She is the author of a chapbook (Girls with Gardenias, 2012, Flutter Press), and a full length poetry collection (Downriver, Aldrich Press, 2015.) She currently serves as a poetry editor for VoiceCatcher journal. Her website can be found at kristinroedell.wikidot.com
Chantarelle's Notebook 