Telling the Bees about Time

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.