You know a summer’s day when
the bees come indoors
only to lose their way.
The walls are blank, unforgiving.
Baffled, they start their death dance
many miles from home –
to the tune of clinking cutlery and
voices from the patio and then
the dinner bell. As if half-awake they
dart about, slam
their small bodies
into glass, flounce and
pound and pirouette until dazed
with rage they sink
low, stammer into a slow, teasing
waltz, trace giddy spirals, forcing
out the last bit of life.
And like a child at a funeral you
watch the ritual without remorse
(a pretty, poignant scene, something
you may well try and make into art,
and what is several bees to a ten-
thousand strong hive), sweep crumbs
from your desk, press pen to
paper on the
warm summer’s day

After a postgrad in Comparative Literature, Clara is trying to read a bit less and write more. She finds it rather challenging.