The sun a spotlight on my metal chair warming
my face tilted up to soak the afternoon’s silence
as sun and land secretly conspire to riotous disorder
sprouting and blooming and bringing forth bees
and ants, gopher snakes and the pair of crows to forage
to mate; my garden their abundant future
Yet politicians scupper Earth’s viable future
the creatures too busy living to anticipate global warming
as habitats shrink and humans mismanage the forage
and the crops, poisoning for profit the natural world to silence,
unconcerned with topics of little interest like bees
and their Honey Bee Colony Collapse Disorder
Children of Earth—all affected by this disorder.
Without our pollinators we have no future.
With every bite of dinner remember the bees
industrious from blossom to flower that teem in the warming
spring after the sluicing winter, their tiny buzzing silence
shrinking, a muted reminder of loss of nutritious forage
Incomprehensible and cruel this throwing off of forage
this dismissal of reality as Earth spirals to disorder.
The presidential request of scientists’ silence,
the denial we have nothing but a bright future
making America great as global warming
dries farmlands to dust and starving the bees
already confused by neonicotinoids, bees
losing their way, unable to fly from forage
to hive. Monsanto, Dow, Bayer aiding the warming
with aggressive pesticides that cause disorder
to the natural cycle. Only super viruses survive the future
as Varroa, the destructor parasite sends bees to silence
We must tabulate the evidence and fill the silence
with the real news. Gone the clover, the alfalfa. Our bees
are starving and the almond crop is dwindling. In our future:
the memory of honey and butter spread on hot toast as we forage
the cupboard for a remnant of natural food, but find disorder
of empty plastic containers, the leavings of the Earth’s warming
I offer the other beings my acre of forage
My bees and I are saving seed for the coming disorder
To plant a field of wildflowers—my policy of warming.
