The scout and the swarm

What became of the gathering

High above on the thin cedar bough

Bent beneath the weight of workers

Engorged and satiated before flight

Their buzzsaw call silenced into a distant knot

Split from the Langstroth boxes offered before?

For a clasp-knife boyhood scar

Once vivid in crimson

Now hidden deep in gnarled folds and 

Under tired knuckles

The search may be just as fruitless

At dinner across the drive

Children moved to their own sound and rhythm

Swatting this evening’s Mayflies

Climbing a Japanese maple

Regal and red

Framed in the same sunlight as yesterday’s itinerant colony

After dinner I slipped into an aluminum void

Away from anyone ill 

To where invisible remnants of today’s horror 

Are banished

To stay quietly within

May 26, 2020

James Noble is a neurologist based in New York.

Copyright 2020, the author