I am parched, bedrock dry.
All week I pray for rain;
some sign, the deluge baptismal
A balm that soothes
The swarm and buzz
Of the brain, head pain,
That begs to be quenched
Purified by water
Made whole and holy.
All week I read of bees.
The way they dance before
The hive, signing harvest
Honeyed sources. Even
The bees seem desperate
The queen's clover meadow
Has yellowed and dried,
Such fury in the hive.
I go to our wooden box, peer
through slated sides. It is
a home abuzz with concern.
No rain has met our flowers,
There are no orchard apples on which to alight.
The noise of the swarm other worldly,
A heated knot of bodies, the bees
dance for rain, and like me,
They wish and will it.

By Friday we are still...
I see bodies one by one,
Brought with such solemnity
to the alighting Board, the dry
and dirty dead are carried out,
a private funeral march, I hear Chopin.
We are each of us so entranced
That we hardly notice the greys
Rolling in, the rough frame of nimbus
As it passes ocean's line
and the first drops fall.
I stand in my bridal whites, my smoker
Clouding up the sky until the clouds
Spill over and the rain comes hard,
Dances on the tin roof
of the hive, of my house.