Bees and Goldenrod – a poem by Dennis Camire

Bees and Goldenrod


I know I’m not supposed to believe 
 That the bees bee-lieve in some God 
and a heavenly hierarchy of hives 

 but, this morning, so many sister bees
were piously harvesting each bloom’s
 vaulted altar of nectar and pollen 

that their work seemed like worship; 
 and I dreamed of a rosary bead of bees 
to keep me alert to this single-mindedness 

 on sweetness, light, and the source, maybe, 
of all being where a Hildegard Von Bingen 
 of queen orchestrates this holy order

of receiver bees (can you believe) ingesting
 arriving nectar then transferring it—mouth to mouth—
to the interior hive while others, unseen,

 all day, flap wings inside dark chambers to keep 
the hive between eighty-five and ninety degrees. 
 Oh, by noon, I swooned over this last supper 

of summer as I witnessed some arriving 
with half their weight in pollen and willing, 
one book says, to die in flight for the sake 

of the  hive. Now, it was all too much 
not to kneel over the gravel’s pew of duff 
and lift a chalice of nectar-filled blossom up 

to get a God’s eye view of sister bees’ 
transubstantiating nectar into honey 
that heals the human body. Forgive, then,

 my seduction by these sweet, Carmelite nuns 
plunging me beneath the pool of buds  
before rising to be born again into the 

First Universalist Church of all things bloom. 
And forgive these ceaseless sermons on
these blessed bees almost walking on water

 as hovering over flowers, they taste buds
with their feet to see if it’s worth burning 
 calories to land then launch. And, yes, musing
on earth’s own looming colony  collapse, 

I bought the hive, don the suit, and feel 
my own being communing with some sacred body 
each time I raise the host of honeycomb  

and proclaim “Amen” to the priestess bees 
giving their lives, so joyfully, to tend 
one of God’s rods of fall goldenrod.

Dennis Camire is a writing instructor at Central Maine Community College. His poems have appeared in Poetry East, Spoon River Review, The Mid-American Review and other journals and anthologies. An Intro Journal Award Winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, his most recent book is an Anthology of Awe and Wonder, Deerbrook Editions. Of Franco-American origin, he lives in an A-frame in West Paris, Maine.