Midwifery
The cloak of bees part
and from one cell she wriggles,
a cluster of pale light.
Snub-nosed sister,
the little blonde bee
strokes her antennae and
dances her first circle
in the palm of your hand –
round and round the garden.
Midwife Mike murmurs there you go
before a bang of trays, a scrape of foundation wax
and a fossick for pollen bread – see
the square-bottomed drone and the tawny
large cells they hatch from.
Incidental knowledge on the journey
of how to stoke the smoker
its trail of smoke a-twist in the trees.
A fruitless search for the queen
who seems content (like me) today
to bask in the glory
of her young.
Tina Regtien has spent twenty-six years as an actor, several as a teacher, fourteen as a parent and many more as a student of writing. She started this journey with Whitireia back in 2001. This is one poem in a series about bees and conversation (see Pollination, 4th Floor Literary Journal 2011).