Sisters,
I would not unwild you
nor attempt to keep.
Look at your wings!
Say gossamer
& have it be too thick
a word for the whir of you!
Some fool men define your liquor as
distillation of fallen rainbows, they say,
constellations made dew you gather,
but I know better-
how females strive, orchard or hive,
it is some magic, our production,
but also grunt labor, this alchemy
of we who exist for exhaustion made sweet.
I plant the seed,
graft the tree,
coax the calyx,
but you, I envy:
how does it feel to be a flower’s desire?
Rae Lamicq is a writer, mother & educator who lives in Oregon. She has been a Youth Services Reference Assistant at both Cedar Mill Community Library & Beaverton City Library. She currently does on-call work at BCL. Her poems for this issue were inspired by a delightful text she read on all things apiary: A Short History of the Honey Bee: Humans, Flowers, and Bees in the Eternal Chase for Honey by E. Readicker-Henderson. She checked it out from the library.