Ruins

Ruins

Broken arches and ragged walls –

this time-worn structure lies abandoned

open to the sky.

A site of great activity

of business to produce

and reproduce –

here lived a busy population

now gone.  They and their progeny

have all moved on

heavy with possessions

leaving this building

to start again.

No evidence of artillery

damage, bombs or snipers

no pocked plaster –

now these rooms, once good

accommodation, are forsaken

and forgotten.

Polished floors and smoothed corners

rounded steps from frequent use

by inmates, born

and bred within these narrow cells

where no space is wasted

in neat design.

Nothing left of them

except a lingering mustiness

of propolis.

Ancient sweetness remains somehow

embedded long after their departure.

The bees have flown

each hexagon has done its work –

the pods end in a point,

an illusion

repeating patterns of ruination.

My hand crumbles masonry fragments to the

lightness of comb.

This is a busy time for the bee keeper - it's the time for swarming.

Swarm.

What a word!
I say it several times, and feel its strangeness.
And its onomatopoeic quality, with the initial hissing consonant starting within the warm darkness of the mouth, to be funneled and directed, projected from the compressed lips and sent forth with the dropping of the jaw - especially if you take your time over it.  Which bees do.
Then closure.

The word's been spoken, the bees gone.

Of course, it's all a lot more complicated.

There are signs before it actually happens, but even the experienced keeper can be caught out: suddenly, the decision's been made, though they may well hang around for a bit.

And swarms can arrive, as well as depart.

And the whole colony may not go.

But at some point, the bee keeper is left with what remains: ruins comparable to the Great Pyramid or Silbury Hill, so carefully, painstakingly, laboriously was it all constructed.

And so I find myself, like some archaeological tourist, marveling at, picking over, peering through and wandering amongst this network of cells.

The bees have done their work, lived their lives, and gone.

In an attempt to resist anthropomorphism, I draw on hexagons - six stanzas of six lines, with an emphasis on symmetry and regularity.  But it's difficult, as I'm left with a vision of abandonment if not destruction, which cannot but remind me of human swarming...