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Tina Regtien

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).

 

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