Beekeeping for Beginners
by Joanna Grant
I thought I might try it, too.
It was the glamour of it all,
the image, my cottage in
the country somewhere,
my very own roses over
my very own door. Never mind
that I knew nothing but
my own wants—the rest would
come with reading, with the very
wanting of it all. Mistakes were made.
I skimped. Paid too much attention
to the pretty little hive, not enough
to what lies within. I got my swarm hooked
on antibiotics. They got depressed, and
that was even before the beetle larvae
and the American foulbrood. My queen
was not gentle. She was not calm. I let her go
one afternoon when the thrum thrum of their buzz
got to sounding too much like the ringing
in my own ears. I let them fly free and planted flowers.
The wild kind, the tame kind, all the kinds.
A lot of them died, too, just like my bees.
I’m not much of a gardener, either. But.
Perhaps someday they will remember me.
How I tried so hard for them.
Joanna Grant holds a Ph.D. in British and American literature, specializing in fictional as well as nonfiction travel narratives of the Middle East. She spent eight years in that region, notably two years in Afghanistan, teaching writing, mythology, and public speaking classes to American soldiers and gathering materials for her own memoir, which she is currently completing as part of an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Southern New Hampshire University under the direction of Mark Sundeen. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely in journals including Guernica and Prairie Schooners.
