By Hannah Goff
- Because it’s like playing where’s waldo in a dazzling floral adventure
- Because we hope their black and yellow suits don’t fall into our soda
- Because schools of fish, flocks of bird, colonies of termites
- Because the five eye fickle freaks thrum the same strings
- The little busy bees faints when the twigs cease to dance
- As predictable as luck- buzz, buzz, buzz
- Because a swarm is an exposed brain
- Because we observe a dark cloud of pudding with nerve endings
- Bees to hives, neurons to brains
- Because colony meetings are where decisions are made democratically
- For we support our poppy seed brainy bunch with no theme song
- Because hearts and brains have different opinions
- Get them out of my ears
- Because I’m alone in a bee loud glade
- Because let’s talk bees
- Because smelly footprints litter petals of the cosmos
- The only time smelly feet stimulate appetite
- Because the odor is deadly like the holly berries you mistake for jam
- Because why are their fingerprints kept on file
- For let’s not forget their serial killer motives
- Because our stout armor strips their weapon
- Wasps with a deserved reputation
- Because who doesn’t like peppermint
- Because there is a meteor shower of traffic routes
- Scanning – Dips – Evades – Teases – Escape
- Because constructing the poetry of distance is brilliant
- Because the b-line weaves through boroughs with no delay
- Because Merriam-Webster trusts pheromones
- How do they know their two pairs of wings won’t bear the poles?
- Because a flight around the world is an idea cavity
- Because we play the wheel of fortune
- Because it depends on where they buzz
- Because the exquisite chemists dilute our sores
- Where is the lifeguard as we ravage through nectar?
- Because when will we share their fate
- Because we press snooze on warnings
- Because global warming is high-jacking public policy
- Because Nancy Drew isn’t here to teach the act of order
- Because our regurgitation is bitter
- Honey Bee, where are you?
- Because in every woman there is a queen
- Because sometimes we have to adjust our crown
- Why are we served Welch’s when there is royal jelly?
- Because we value collective genetic legacy
- Because who can reject a queen in her hierarchy?
- Because the throne is velvet
- But not everyone sees red
- Because no excuses
- Because hives should be immortal
- Because tea and roasted pears
- Because they remember your face
- Theirs cannot be erased.
Editor’s note: Hannah Goff is a freshman at Colgate University. She enjoys hanging out with The New Yorker cartoons, Saturday Night Live, Chekhov plays, fellow sustainability representatives on campus, and honey bees. Last summer she founded the first pollinator garden at her high school. Goff generates poems featuring the superpowers of bees to inspire bee conservation efforts across all ages and, with that goal in mind, shared “The Bee’s Knees,” a poem illuminating the life of bees and various social issues. It is published here in bulleted paragraphs to keep the verses together.