Not a Single Bee

July 2023.

A month without a single bee.

The explanation, the gardener thought while sitting on lees,

Possible it was pollen choked by the trees.

It could not be that the corn was weedless,

It could not be fruit everywhere was seedless.

The explanation was not man was harmless,

It almost made gardening pointless.

It could not be the altered DNA,

Man made it better; it was here to stay.

It was not the bee still dormant from May,

It must be the gods who made it this way.

Yes, that made sense; it could not be man,

The all-powerful bee-god cursed the land.

Yes, he took them up with a mighty hand,

Melons would no longer grow in loamy sand.

Now everything has to be self-pollinated,

The factories ultra-violet. Sterile. Shaded.

Bees do not matter when profit is traded,

They no-more know how natural fruit tasted.

The gardener sat and sent up a prayer,

It seemed like the world no-longer cared.

"Bring back the bees," to the flowers he shared,

Far above the sun through droplets glared.

It must have been the bee-god as the rain began to fall,

Maybe it was tears that answered the call.

To his home the gardener would not withdraw,

'Good to those who wait,' was a universal law.

Outside the rain nothing else came,

He Q-tipped the pollen like a bee the same.

Every flower touched was a tedious game,

Lack of bee-god worship was certainly to blame.

Then there was honey at a high price,

The bee-god told the gardener to buy it thrice.

"Hoard it forever your children to entice,

Tell them of the day man rolled the dice."

Now it is rare; natural crops an elegy,

Bee-god worship is surely the key.

If he bows the gardener is then to surely to see,

The triumphal return of the precious honeybee.