Tanging

I

I listen –

all the day long

for someone who

is carving out their words –

crafting them with

simple caring and a

wizened devotion to

perfection in its every

detail.

There is none.

I listen behind their words,

over their words, and

under their words for

on inkling of what might be called

rapture, or glory, or even

a hint of beauty or awe.

I would settle for a smidgeon

of wonder.

There is none.

Pure, didactic and opulent

self-obsession and an

hideous, singularity of

despair is foaming on their

lips; falling to the

ground in piles of

frothy hypocrisy and

un-disguised condemnation

of anyone within range.

There is a habit –

to keep bees from swarming –

that when a keeper

of  hives or skeps

has died and been

laid low in the

ground for burial, that

a loved one

of the keeper

will slowly approach

the bees to tell them

of the keeper’s death.

They will utter in whispered tones

of the loss and of the desire

for the bees to stay

and

not to swarm

beyond the walls of their

present enclosure and home

of honeyed sweetness.

The hive will be draped

in a black cloth

as a covering of wailing

and sympathetic reaching

to hold the bees in the company of

the grieved.

That one –

that friend of the

keeper –  must carve his

words with tenderness

and must craft her words

with longing. It is

how they keep the place

in place for the bees –

for the hive.

Death can move things

and shift things

and make a hive want

to swarm up and out

of its “here” to get away

and leave.

Proper crafting and carving

of the words and emotion

are believed to extend

the pleasantries of the

familiar and keep the bees

from the swarm

that would carry them

off and away

from their place of living

their place of life.

II

There is a loud

and raucous clanging of

the pots and of the pans

should the words of

empathetic grief

not meet

the solemn nature of the

moment and

the bees would gather

to swarm;

gather to away.

This tanging is

only for the departure

and none other. It sets

the world on edge

that there is a leaving,

that there is an awaying

from what has been to

some new thing that

will be.

Not before.

Not until.

There is often no

preparing

for these times;

no anticipatory dance

that allows us to know.

There is a swift and focused

gathering together of

the disparate portions

of the hive and a leaving

that is upon us in the

twinkling of an eye.

The queen in – all the warp

and weft of the stability of

this bonded and connected

place of unity and dependence –

is just as likely

to stay as go. The mitosis of

this tribe flashes forth

on what seems to us as whim.

Gone.

Let the clanging

of the tanging

begin.

III

I long

to hear such words

as would stir in me

a staying beyond the

days of the keeper’s death.

Such words as would soothe

some piece of my me in the

change of burying some

large portion of

my days and ways of being.

Those words would be

autumnal and rattle

across the surface of

of my path as

they blow away on

the hint of any small wind –

all dried out

as the could and would be.

Only a sound,

betraying

their departure –

a tanging of the

abandonment of summer

and her long lit lazy days –

will mark

on the instant

when the shift

has come to be.

IV

What men,

Walt,

do so care enough

for the swarming

that they would pause to

craft the communal

words of reparation with

passion and design?

What women,

Walt,

will make a space

of tenderness and

“together” so inviting

and warm to keep

the hive from having

away.

These are the ones

I listen for; with ears

striving to hear faint strains

and whispers. My hope is

poised in the longitude

and latitude of grace that

holds out against all odds

for the simple connection

of lips to heart. They

must be moving closer.

Listen.

Is that them?

image from www.romancingthebee.com