A Murmuration of Bees, by Britton Gildersleeve

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A Murmuration of Bees, by Britton Gildersleeve

$12.00

“A single bee is nothing / Her life of 40 days begins / and ends / in anonymity // Fed by her sisters / warmed by the music of wings / she grows from blindness / into light // In her mouth the amber / sweetness of summer / a hundred thousand hours / of flight”

“When the dinosaurs put on feathers / they began to sing / like the polyphonic chanting / of Tibetan monks, their throats / filled with notes, music spilled / like dark honey into time / Music the colour of soft amber / warm and slightly acrid in the ear / on the tongue / a kind of music that haunts / the threshold spaces / bridges and doorways / movement from egg to nest”

So opens Britton Gildresleeve’s collection, a light-filled elegy to mortality and the evanescent beauty and pain of our world.

A single bee is nothing
Her life of 40 days begins
and ends
in anonymity
 
Fed by her sisters
warmed by the music of wings
she grows from blindness
into light
 
In her mouth the amber
sweetness of summer
a hundred thousand hours 
of flight

— excerpted from “Love like honey”