House of wax

Some call us yesterday’s bees,
working old honeycomb. Are we
only circling, a phrizz of amber,
un-hived?
The call to be golden crescendos
within, clothed in stone, a kind
of falling, over and over. “Sink
deeper,” is one whisper,
all winter, earth like bronze
and scores of husks—the exiled,
shattered. Workers know this:
honey splits the great hum,
come spring. What is a life
without lavender, rag-tag
monarda, or the silky cosmos?—
myriad shivers of wing,
months of rehearsing
hunger, bowing down
in the warm dark, the pregnant
dust, with its little sails.