by Maureen Hynes

The buzz is loud for miles. Heavy rain, slippery
road ramp, the truck takes a weighty spill.
Jostle and thud: crack. The cargo, in crates
on pallets, dumps out onto the shoulder:
twelve million bees arise, a mighty
orchestra of hum. The air thickens
and pulsates, the rain continues.

This is a world where even the insects
have jobs, commute around the continent to work.
First the precarious Atlantic blueberries, then back
to Ontario to pollinate some other crop. Almonds
in California, plums and apples in BC.
Some questions I am trying to raise
without getting stung: are the bees like the rest
of us, our lives ordered by another?
How can we rob the bees of their natural lives
—what is a natural life? Is it under-
nectared and overworked, crossing
time zones, dazed and jetlagged,
vulnerable to mites and viruses and colony collapse?

Little charioteers of thrum, husky and striped,
your furred chorus rises visibly above the highway:
consternation and the definition of hover.
The rapid thrib-throb of your wings against the rain,
you smelling your way back
to your queen, your hive, your transport van.

Maureen Hynes is a past winner of the Gerald Lampert Award and the Petra Kenny Poetry Award (London, England) and her poetry was shortlisted for the 2007 CBC Literary Awards. She has published two books of poetry, Harm’s Way and Rough Skin, and is working on a third. She is poetry editor of Our Times, Canada’s national labour magazine.