The Bees

The bees are going down, you know, it’s a well known fact
statistically but also purely
anecdotally, because the ground is suddenly
pebbled with the dead little things.
Two in the kitchen,
three on the wet slope of concrete as I was pulling the door
outside where it’s almost August.
Curled up in fur as if, in a final moment, to curb that sense
of being far away from the edges of yourself.
I don’t think of fur as something settled on cadavers
except maybe the cadavers of fruit, lost in the corner,
earthed in that fungal smell,
the sweet heave of mould on the remains of a pear or an apple or orange –
in the residual curve like cartilage
they carry inside them an Autumn in hours.

Image by Aaron Molina