I had a lot of time to think yesterday, about the break up of a political group, and the ongoing painful dissolution of an intimate working relationship. And bees — I spent a lot of time thinking about bees.

Colonies
Elliott batTzedek

It is not that we can not work together.

It’s that we work as bee colonies.

Individuals, droning in shared purpose,
pausing in doorways, dancing
to give such divinely complicated directions
to the pollen
that comes and goes so quickly.

And the queen bee?
Ah—the queen bee. Well.
The colony keeps her undercover,
everything delivered to support her single task—
making more of us
and more.
There are always more and always
at some point
other queens arise and we divide,
we divide,
and some stay and some follow
to a new field.

This is a beginning,
     always beginning, a fresh start
     in an old world.
This is birth,
     survival at the most 
     fundamental level—
resources stretched too far can not suffice.
And, too crowded,
we do sting one another
more or less accidentally.

So we go off
carrying all we’ve learned
carrying shared genes, shared dreams
and remembering
how to make honey
how to make honey
how to make more of us
    and feed each other honey.