James Harms
The Bee Poem
Dash asked me what I liked best
about being a kid when I was a kid
and I said, Climbing trees, and he
laughed and wrote that down.
I’m not sure he’s climbed a tree,
or at least not the way I did.
I remember a plum tree
in our front yard that wasn’t
much to climb, and how one day
I reached for a branch just above
the one I was on and put my hand
in a hive of hornets, and fell ten feet
with a dozen of them buzzing around
me and stinging my arms and neck
and the same spot behind both knees.
I rolled in the grass until they gave up.
My mom caked me in calamine
and watched for a few minutes to
make sure I didn’t inflate like Aviator
Snoopy in the Macy’s Day Parade,
then went back to making dinner.
I didn’t mention the hornets to Dash.
He was nine on the diving board at
the public pool the first time a bee
settled on his wrist and delivered
its death kiss. From what they tell me
he screamed and refused to dive
or leave the board or explain
what happened. Poor lifeguards.
His older brother had his first sting
in an apple orchard south of Pittsburgh
and sat there in a pile of rotten apples
crying and trying anyway to eat the damn
Empire in his hand. As for Phoebe,
I think she managed to make it until
high school and just found the whole thing
confusing, though it “Hurts like hell,”
she said. Bees and hornets and wasps
and yellowjackets. I think the worst
I’ve had it was stepping barefoot on one
in the grass at a picnic. I was old
enough to pretend it was no big
deal, limped off toward the car and a
first aid kit beneath the seat smiling and
waving like, Hey, I’ll be back in a sec.
I sat behind the wheel for ten minutes
sniffling and trying to find the stinger
in my big toe. That’s not the whole history
of my life with bees, etc., but why go on?
I thought of all this tonight when Walt
texted a picture of his latest tattoo,
Ferdinand the Bull. It was beautiful,
and I began to cry. I can reach the book
from here, where I’m sitting staring
at my phone thinking of bees
and a bull and the ferocity of pain
and how sometimes that’s mistaken
for something else. Tomorrow
I’ll try to figure out what that something is.
For now, Dash is calling out for me
from his room. He wants to ask me
can we go outside, or rather,
what else I liked when I was a kid.
I think it’s a school project, another
family history power point he can share
with his classmates online. Or maybe
he just really wants to know.