Fall/Winter 2016



Dorothy Alexander

BEEKEEPING FOR BEGINNERS

Emily heard a fly buzz when she died.
I say no flies for me. I want to hear
a busy bee buzzing his way back home,
flying low, weighed down with nectar,
work worthy of his reputed busyness.
I want to be buzzed by sweetness,
by elegant profit, a harvest of honeyed goodness,
by a worker who brings forth more than
this noisy fear of inadequacy that burdens
my own wavering flight, a thirst I would quench
for myself, if granted such power.
And as the earth dissolves like snow,
I want to see the Queen leading the procession,
her minions droning a dirge,
everything perfectly adequate at last.

 


Dorothy Alexander – poet, memoirist, attorney, jurist and independent press publisher– has authored five books of poetry and memoir, and edited three anthologies of rural Oklahoma folk history. She reads her work throughout the Southwest.

 


 

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