Like honey, there is only
so much of it one can make,
and even less in a season.
The queens rise and fall.
The tides of loyalty shift.
On a winter morning,
as snow swarms the field
where hives were planted
all summer, I imagined
broad flakes as ghosts
of confessor bees,
how they listened
and took my secrets away,
how they understood
the frailties of their keeper,
and keeping my trust,
did not judge me.
They understood life.
Lavender dries in a bowl,
its scent an ancient tapestry
woven to depict
three women in a garden,
reading a book of hours,
waiting tell the bees
that Time belongs to no one,
that patience is only the beginning
of a story too long to end.
Bruce Meyer is author or editor of 64 books of poetry, short fiction, flash fiction, and non-fiction. He has had three national bestsellers in Canada, and was 2019 winner of the Anton Chekhov Prize for Fiction (UK) and the Freefall Prize for Poetry. He has recently been a finalist in the Bath Short Story Prize, the National Poetry Competition (UK), the Tom Gallon Trust Fiction Prize, the Carter V. Cooper Prize, and the Thomas Morton Prize for Fiction. He lives in Barrie, Ontario, and teaches at Georgian College and Victoria College at the University of Toronto. More of his poetry and writing can be found here.