Ready – Lady Poem 6/11/2015
June 11, 2015
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Whim steps to garden path
Growth loads jewelweed’s spring
Wood’s xylem shades us
~ Lady
1st sting new hive
June 3, 2015
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my 1st bee sting from our hive
My right hand has ballooned up like a Michael Meyers fat suit.
I got my first sting from our beehive Monday on our 7th interaction with it. Weather was too cold to open the hive for inspection – 46 degrees when the bees prefer 55 – and I was too aggressive in cleaning out burr comb (that’s the wax honeycomb the bees build between frames or inappropriate places in the hive), and when I was done, one bee stung me.
It was so gentle I said “Did I just get stung?” and looked and sure enough there was the stinger with its venom sac still attached. I pulled it out and pretty much ignored it. They suggest you take benadryl after a sting, but this seemed so minor, I didn’t. That night I had trouble finding where I was stung and was thinking this is nothing.
Info says swelling and pain happens immediately, then subsides after a few hours, so I thought I was free and clear. Next morning I woke to a hugely swollen hand, not painful but super itchy, difficult to close into a fist, so I didn’t start swelling until 12-15 hours after the sting.
Now after two days of ballooning ever bigger, I’m waiting for the swelling to subside. I think it’s reached maximum size because it can’t get much bigger without exploding . . . I’ve no detail on my hand, no knuckles, no wrinkles, no veins, just bulging tight red itchy artificial looking balloon skin with a hardness beneath the main sting area.
I don’t wear any protective gear when inspecting the hive, just a white t-shirt, but if I’m stung again I’ll have to reconsider.
I’m a little sad losing my non-stung status after working with our beekeeper mentor for a year plus seven visits to our own hive, but I’m also proud to be carrying a sting from our own hive.
Interesting point about the burr comb I removed – my pa-in-law who’s an engineer noted the six-sided wax cells the bees construct have the front-side cells offset half a cell from the back-side cells . . . this makes their entire honeycomb structure much stronger (see foto below).
holding honey bee burr comb up to the light
BITS OF MOVING DUST
May 30, 2015
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Ancestors
of part of an agrarian past
holding baskets of now
heirloom produce–
the tomato
and smiling forever
Or in tall, dignified finery
in an ancient hall, kind of slow
and lacking in color
Or in an exhale
let into relaxed
and painless air
sans worry
And there’s us
too often with our calculators
days locked inside brains
Or better sometimes, looking
and listening
All of it, living and past–
Connected
to everything on the backdrop
of the cosmos – deeper and deeper
starry mirror
Us
clumping together
bits of moving dust
in sentient host
~ Lady
Gracias
May 21, 2015
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Gracias
Roses spilling blooming fountains
blossoming from hand, ribbons dangling down
tokens appreciating life during rites
of life
Where did roses come from? How is it
they are so beautiful, so cultivated?
Did The Universe know they would be
prized and make them, these queens
of flowers?
Or is it just that we decided–an elevation
of taste like chrysanthemums
in Asia?
Birds sing signalling redemption,
this new day, this new season
deliveries of fresh dawns
relentless freshness
And their lungs,
so many varied synrinx whistles
warbling signature songs through
music box throats–
What shape the key but
a kind of sheer permeating cheer?
~ Lady
Lady Poem – May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015
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Hinted reality
ancient spirit, ancestor breath
grazing flowers, batting lightly,
sighing with memories
Petal confetti, celebratory leaves
marking sloughs of years, one’s
perennialism hastening and plumping,
bruising and shrinking, crinkling to paper,
eaten by the reach of ground and
hunkering into dormancy, germ
starting over again
~ Lady
life on earth
May 11, 2015
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Life on Earth
The sheep make their pen.
The cowed graze in grumble.
I await the fair.
– Smith, 5.11.2015
Opened our beehive for the 4th time yesterday. Found eggs and larva and wax cells with nectar and pollen and capped brood and observed bees coming back to the hive with packs of yellow pollen on their legs. And we saw the queen bee, so we’re still in business.
Figure our first year is pure learning. Thank goodness the bees are doing most of the work.
So far only one stung human, my ma-in-law who was trying to plant some special bee flowers around the hive and was stung by a bee in the grass as she was digging . . . got her finger.
Strange to see 10,000 bees buzzing, in constant motion of gold and fairy wings. So gentle and forgiving too. A hive starts with 3 pounds of bees, approximately 10,000, grows to 60,000-80,000 bees in summer, then reduces to 20,000 – 30,000 in winter.
A bee lives 6 weeks, unless it’s late fall and they stop flying for food and then live 3 months over winter keeping the hive warm and clean while attending the queen.
Lady Poem May 11, 2015
May 11, 2015
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Thuvian throatsong, patter of Cherokee drums,
congregation of tents, comfortable nests of campfire
communities, dogs settled in the dirt thumping tails
once in a while, watching, trusting, us on our beat-up
old couch surrounded by third floor art–so many centers
of the world in their own sweet ways
so thankful
~ Lady
Lady Poem May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015
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Held on a leash in life’s lease,
the buttresses of relaxation we hurriedly make
outside bookends of workdays for the great big
blue-green-tan-white panorama
of Nature
Beneath sky blue or
the wrinkled brow of clouds’ introspection
I want to walk, walk in and under and marvel
on this marble of planet
Longer stays in the knit of what matters
Idylls of Heaven on Earth
and Heaven in Heaven
~ Lady
Lady Poem ~ May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015
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Spinning dust around clump of star
banging itself into planet, battered matter
germinating feather, fishscale, skin and chitin
Years around sun like cyclical menstruation,
seasons ringing into the layers of trees, canopy
provisions bearing fruit, leaf, bark, home, even
exoskeleton appetizers for woodpeckers
Early histories of harmony, isotopic evolution
in Earth over time traced by argon, potassium,
lead and hafnium, rock rebar and feather thread–
the interrelations of things
~ Lady
Lady Poem – May 2, 2015
May 2, 2015
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Of honeyed pastries sampled by cupids bows of beestung lips, of truth’s shimmering antimony, of galena’s grit, poison powdered from the monadnock to kohl the pretty eyes of infants of India, of beautiful dreamers destroying nightmares, the bewilderment of complex confusions, dazzling disarrays brushed into the great mother’s dustpan, reverently tucked up and put away, of murmur’s collected chorus wandering under the scintillating cast of wondering stars
~ Lady