Summoner's Tales

I: Every little thing she does is magic

 

Moving in the sun,

Patterns of the waggle dance

As stripy pointers

 

Pollen polling day,

Sipping nectar, aroma

Spreading forth a glow

 

The careful shopper,

Only the best in her bags,

Keeping the receipt

 

Floating far afield

The missionary of scents

Seeking her harvest

 

More than a straw poll:

Reviews are in, for the best,

Bottled for the hive

 

Spring flowers rising,

Sending signals of colour

On radio waves

 

For the connoisseur

This is wine-tasting, sorting

Beaujolais from plonk

                                                                                                                                          

The cataloguer

To the field of cloth of gold

For her gleaming prize

 

The sun lights her stripes

In the strong scent of knowledge

Showing her the way

 

How certain her flight

Charted through the grass and hay,

Canny stewardess

 

Post-mistress of plants,

Sorting into sacks, then out

For delivery

 

Pointed proboscis

Peering into the affairs

Of ambrosia

 

Weary traveller,

Resting briefly on the lip

Of the bright orchid

 

Stripy gatherer

Flying fast now to the hive

To aid her sisters

 

Dancing at sunset

Joy of the heavy burden

Close of a full day

 

II: Synchronicity

 

While the red bees hum,

Black bodies thick as burglars’

Stealing the nectar

 

Bees killed in defence

Of the hive, fallen chevrons

The marks of honour

 

So the invader

Repelled, the valiant ones

Lie in their splendour

 

The waxy caverns

Side by side by side, stretching

Their soft amber light

 

So much together,

The reign of the queen quelling

Rumours of breaking

 

The rattle and hum

Sound of the hive in living,

Moving and being

 

The workers go out

Faithful in their mission field

To take the pollen

 

Each grain they recruit

A disciple for the host,

The great assembly

 

Fishwives of the air,

Harvesting pollen, banking

Their winter reserves 

 

The care of larvae,

Nursing with royal jelly

The small hatching heads

 

Waxing lyrical,

The guests of Madame Tussaud’s

Sleeping in their hive

 

Fighting predators,

Warriors with their stings raised,

Faithful to the death

 

The time of flowers

Calls them outside, pendulum

Of hours swaying

 

In a time to dance,

Living light of heather calls

Forth its purple sound

 

The horn of summer

Sounds its waking blast, to rouse

Resting ones to ride

 

III: They dance alone

 

The carpenter bee

Sawing her habitation,

Sharp leg a chisel

 

Noise of construction

Preparing her nest, a field

Of dreams soon made real

 

Logging on to the

Stories of the oak and elm

For the nursery

 

Mason bee resides

In a hotel of dead wood,

Proud in the decay

 

Sitting in the wood,

Dawn comes and up she rises

To go on the heights

 

A resurrection

From dead wood back to living,

Growth of her larvae

 

A leafcutting bee

Carving circles in the smooth

Acacia leaves

 

With a snip-snip here,

The foliage turning there,

Down into the nest

 

Smooth leaves broken, turned

Sharp as the edge of holly,

Long before Christmas

 

Spade of digger bee

Shovelling the earth for her

Nest, safe in the ground

 

The instrument of

Turning the soil to fresh times,

Breathing death to life

 

How hard she shovels,

Calls out songs of joy, until

Earth returns her song

 

Sweat bee in summer

Gleams in her glands, now singing

Bright as the sunrise

 

The moister the path

She flies, the shine and shadow

A fruit in season

 

High point of summer

Marks her trail, the sundial

The secret of noon

 

IV: Fields of gold

 

Delphic oracle,

The prophetess called a bee

Hums forth her knowledge

 

Homer spoke of three

Bee maidens with the power

Of divination

 

Honey for the gods

From the times of Mycenae,

Slowly dripping gold

 

Go down to the hives,

Telling the bees before the

Family of news

 

Winged bee goddesses

Riding slowly down from Rhodes

On embossed gold plaques

 

The bees in Beauly

Murmur in their Myrmidons

In praise of the hive

 

Weaving warp and weft,

The spinning of honeycomb

In its golden sheets

 

Waxing lyrical,

The six-sided song of the

Hexagon echoes

 

The knitted fabric,

Cell upon cell divided

In their unity

 

Harmony in wax

Efficient in effigy

The six resounding

 

The sweetest riches

Stretching mile on bee sized mile

Golden avenues

 

Joy of composing,

The sound of artists making

Their bright-scented taste

 

Patterns of the hive

Layered for all the sisters,

The queens of rhythm

 

Six legs to six sides,

The harvest distributed,

Building up the store

 

The shining treasure

Tempts hunters to the entrance,

Warriors alert

                              

V: Spirits in the material world

 

Like will o’the wisp,

A jack o’lantern by day,

A beautiful gleam

 

Diaphanous shift

The flashing jewels in flight

Daughters of the queen

 

Older warriors

Swarm forth to defend the hive,

Their great wings whirring

 

Texture as spun glass,

The thinnest of the windows

Looking on the world

 

The aerial blades

Spin out their rotor story,

Now deceived by flight

 

The active prisms

Miasmas of refracted

Colour in the sun

 

Carved by the Aztecs,

Raised in golden homonym,

The sign of the stripes

 

How hard the rowers

Of the air push the currents,

Sailing stripy ships

 

Ancient of years, linked

By the wingspan of the great

Soft humming, the sound

 

Where her treasure is

There is her heart, in flying

Home to the honey

 

A bee hums gently:

Waking of the hexagons

To six-sided life

 

The stripy choppers

Birling as the whirligigs

Before touching down

 

The navigators

Charting the sun, compass to

Elysian fields

 

Her pollen basket

Swinging free below her wings

Her messages home

 

Now the colours shine

Through the joy of her wings to

The reach of rainbows