Thank you for this poem. New images come each time I read it. For me it never rests, it stays hovering, buzzing, tense.
have been making my own flight paths (of the bee maidens?) in my reading to help me see better. Still more flights to go before I land on every flower and experience it fully. As ever, you widen my experience of the world and words and take me down paths I might never find on my own. Thank you friend.
“i keep counting sheep with eyelids
under my eyelids”
The double eyelids are glorious. It’s so clever how it links to the bees and to prophecy.
“hung by honey-hearted words
bee maidens
legs & wings bruised
ill-used”
This is a joy to speak. There is something so perfectly balanced and simple in your words that each time I read it I see the vein like pattern on the translucent wings and see these tiny fragile little bee legs and it hurts, I see them crinkled and crushed. It goes into my body. Every time.
“zip lock baggy feeder for birds of prey” – I think this is my favourite line. It’s given me so much when I read it. It’s so brutal. And funny.
I couldn’t find out too much about Melaina but of course, I’m intrigued. Is she appearing in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes?
How are things up high in your nest? And how is your ‘fut’?
Lots of love xxx