the bees and the beekeeper speak

A meditation on mental and ecological health by Nico Wilkinson and Mackenzie Beninati

Jul 20, 2022

This poem was recently picked up by Deep Overstock journal to be published in Issue 17: Beekeeping. Buy the issue or give it a read here.

This poem was written a few years back by Mackenzie Beninati and I. We’re no strangers to writing duets from our time in poetry slam, but this was the first poem we had the pleasure of writing together. We wrote it for a local Women’s Theater Festival. On stage, I would play the beekeeper, whose words are aligned left in the poem, and Mackenzie would play the bees, whose words are aligned right. The bolded text is spoken together.

Mackenzie and I live in different states now, but a few years back we both lived at The Quaill Club, a little living community for queer artists and farmers. During that time, there was an attempt to keep bees, but beekeeping is a mysterious and heartbreaking activity as of the last few years. With myriad chemical and environmental influences, hives are liable to just leave or die. If you’re a perfectionist like me that is incredibly hard on themselves, especially when the lives of other creatures are on the line, you can probably see why there was only one attempt at beekeeping.

Don’t get me started on how this impacts raising chickens y’all. But actually do, as I have a whole chapbook of chicken poems planned for the near future. Stay tuned.

A line from this poem that sticks with me (and others, as I’ve been told) is the one that goes “Sometimes you can do everything right, as much as a human being can do, and still believe yourself a Midas of Decay.” This line was one that I borrowed from another poem of mine, entitled “compost,” which is about slow heartbreak and trying to make a relationship work when only one of the parties wants it to. Maybe I’ll post that one, one day.

Ultimately, it really does speak to that perfectionism I mentioned earlier. I I hold myself to a higher standard than others hold me, and certainly a higher standard than I'd hold anyone else to. The root of that is a fear of failure, and if you have anxiety, failure can feel as big and as scary as death.

On the topic of perfection, I made very imperfect, very experimental wood type prints of that line. If you want one, just email me. I don’t really have a shop set up but I’d be happy to get one to you.

Okay, now for the poem! Due to the formatting, the poem is uploaded as images. The recording of the poem is included in both a video and audio format, for anyone who wants to listen instead of/while reading so you can hear how Mackenzie and I would have performed it on stage.

Enjoy!

1×

0:00

-3:35

The Bees and the Beekeeper Speak There is an ancient tradition among beekeepers to tell the bees the news of your life much like you would tell a spouse or a close friend. your hurts and your triumphs your secrets and prides Name them Honored guests at weddings, shroud them in obituaries when a family member wilts. the blooming swell of your love the scar that forms in that garden, your heart Speak to them as soft as they walk across wax-capped cells. light and with love speak as sweet as honey Failure to do this, legend states, will result in an empty hive. Everything sweet, gone. and isn’t that like depression finding your beehive empty a silent, dripping portrait of your brain sometimes, you can do everything right, as much as a human can do, and still believe yourself a midas of decay I knew the hive was empty long before I could make myself open it. I’d pressed my ear to the wood and heard nothing. I knew I would find gold caverns filled with your honeyed bodies.

we knew the hum of you was growing quiet every time you walked into the cold to visit us your silence filled every cell if we are not invited if we do not get to mourn with you Our world ends. our world ends These days, they call it Colony Collapse Disorder, when the worker bees disappear and leave behind everything that used to be home: a queen, a brood of young, everything that is family as much as it is survival. you blame your own garden for a world so lacking in flowers Sometimes, the world can do right by me, as much as this aching world can do, and still, I hold my ear to my heart and hear nothing. My brain is a collapsing colony. your brain is a collapsing colony a silent hive honey untouched a garden unpollinated For all of life’s seed and sap that I have collected, I am still trying to keep myself from collapsing. how do you fill your honeycomb with sweet things in a world so covered in pesticides how do you keep the fear from buzzing louder than your will to survive In the gray and winter of me, the cold and silence of me,

I forgot to tell the bees. you forgot to tell the bees tell us of the mornings you woke to a world covered in smoke and refused to be calm about it tell us of the ways you rebelled, dandelion-like through the cement that paves every bit of good dirt tell us of the days you danced a roadmap to the next bit of pollen so others might have nectar tell us how you planted yourself, a garden that could thrive on rain, sun, and a little bit of help from the bees What happens when the world stops talking? When we run out of sweet and golden hope to sustain us? there will be no honey morning no afternoon pollination ballet your silence begets silence but we are always listening This world may have started with a bang, crescendoed in a hum, but it ends with

poems for the apocalypse

Discussion about this post