{"id":15696,"date":"2019-12-01T01:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-12-01T07:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=15696"},"modified":"2019-12-01T01:29:07","modified_gmt":"2019-12-01T07:29:07","slug":"beekeeping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/15696","title":{"rendered":"Beekeeping"},"content":{"rendered":"

I.<\/span><\/p>\n

Iris, spirea, rose of Sharon.
\n<\/span>Daylily, lilac, Japanese pear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Summer\u2019s hum: pulse
\n<\/span>of bee wings, punctuating each image
\n<\/span>in the belly of the image.<\/span><\/p>\n

A bee in a center of petals.
\n<\/span>The needle\u2019s eye the center of the needle.<\/span><\/p>\n

II.<\/span><\/p>\n

All summer long, my father labored
\n<\/span>at the apiary, donning a second skin.
\n<\/span>The cumbersome suit
\n<\/span>made his movements stylized,
\n<\/span>otherworldly. His face
\n<\/span>twice-veiled behind mesh
\n<\/span>and a shroud from the smoker
\n<\/span>which parted from his hands
\n<\/span>as if conjured there.
\n<\/span>In the skein of fumes, the frantic hive
\n<\/span>settled into torpor, and my father
\n<\/span>would reach into the Langstroth,
\n<\/span>scrape propolis from the walls,
\n<\/span>and pry out a honeycomb\u2019s
\n<\/span>perfect geometry. He\u2019d crush
\n<\/span>the wax until each cell broke
\n<\/span>and honey suffused through
\n<\/span>a strainer, gathering like gold
\n<\/span>in the bottom of a pail.<\/span><\/p>\n

And all fall long we\u2019d eat
\n<\/span>the sweet of the stinging things.<\/span><\/p>\n

III.<\/span><\/p>\n

We marveled at the mastery
\n<\/span>of the wax prisms, at the artist
\n<\/span>that consumes its art<\/span><\/p>\n

and thereby lives forever<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

IV.<\/span><\/p>\n

Quickening twilight. The first desiccation
\n<\/span>of leaves on pavement.<\/span><\/p>\n

The garden\u2019s thrum died
\n<\/span>into a slack idle
\n<\/span>as winter approached.<\/span><\/p>\n

The hive turned to alms
\n<\/span>of sugar water, the infusion sticky
\n<\/span>on my father\u2019s fingertips long after
\n<\/span>he\u2019d made his offering.<\/span><\/p>\n

The bees did not always survive.
\n<\/span>At evening, starved corpses littered the ground.
\n<\/span>By dawn all evidence was gone.<\/span><\/p>\n

V.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the hospital, my father dreams of flight.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019s skipped walking,
\n<\/span>gone straight past the necessary
\n<\/span>into the realm of desire.<\/span><\/p>\n

He does not yet seek a cogent voice
\n<\/span>or turn to the question of original wishes.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I dream only of narrow beds, of mouths
\n<\/span>unable to speak, wanting as I do
\n<\/span>the return and not the great leap forward,
\n<\/span>the image and not the imagined.<\/span><\/p>\n

Outside, the sky is an impossible blue,
\n<\/span>hard and cold\u2014a pretense of sun. A lie.<\/span><\/p>\n

VI.<\/span><\/p>\n

After weeks without
\n<\/span>my father\u2019s aid, the hive vanishes.
\n<\/span>A migrant murmur. Water
\n<\/span>disappearing into water.
\n<\/span>Not one trace of ruin remaining
\n<\/span>upon which to stake a poem.<\/span><\/p>\n

VII.<\/span><\/p>\n

When my father comes home,
\n<\/span>we feel the lack
\n<\/span>in the garden, but do not speak of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

We ignore the possibilities of metaphor:
\n<\/span>absent hive, vacant house,
\n<\/span>orphaned flower.
\n<\/span>They are too simple.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am the fled child.
\n<\/span>My father is the hive.<\/span><\/p>\n

My father is my father.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He is a streak of wings across the sun
\n<\/span>that briefly shadows the eye.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

GABRIEL FINE<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I. Iris, spirea, rose of Sharon. Daylily, lilac, Japanese pear.\u00a0 Summer\u2019s hum: pulse of bee wings, punctuating each image in the belly of the image. A bee in a center of petals. The needle\u2019s eye the center of the needle. II. All summer long, my father labored at the apiary, donning a second skin. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2041,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[61],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-45a","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15696"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2041"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15696"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15861,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15696\/revisions\/15861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}