Christina Matthews currently resides in Macon GA by way of Syracuse NY. She lives with her two beautiful, spoiled English Setters. Christina is an English instructor at Fort Valley State University in Georgia, where she teaches composition and creative writing courses. Her poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and journals. Here Christina gives us a persona poem, an allegory that leaves us identifying with the honey bees and wondering if maybe they might identify with us.
Western Honey Bees
By Christina Matthews
The whole roundness of the sun lowers now,
beats and beats and beats at the thinning hive,
thickens the comb, blinds our compound eyes, all
while paradise falls. And the end is …
No scientific omen, the end’s end.
Homes are nothing but hollow blackened caves,
a landfill of memory vaporized
into thin air, no air, no one to breathe.
It is phantom-like, yes, fathomable,
how the slightest change rearranges all
the ellipses … the dried and forgotten honey …
forming and reforming … into hardened
Amber. What a transparent death. To rest
in a hole inside a hole in the ground,
or as a result of combustion–poof–
Nostradamus and his sea of fire.
Our speculation is but a passing cloud.
Certainly, death seems too far predicted.
But what if pattern and chaos are lovers again?
What if, by the time you get this message–silence?
Great imagery, Christina.
Great poem. Wish I could read more!
Splendid!
WOW….what a poet!!!!