Dear Sylvia: The Bees
by Joanna Grant
Dear Sylvia, I wanted to tell you
about the Tuileries, there by L’Orangerie—
you remember it, I know—how they’re
letting some of the grasses grow wild,
how they’ve built hives and started
beekeeping there on the verge of the Seine—
a placard tells us passersby that these
swarms, this new colony, are buckwheat bees,
specially picked for their resilience,
their gentle, kind-hearted natures,
loathe to offer up their stings.
Oh, Sylvia, you know we’ve both
tried it before, how the keeping of bees
and all that that means is not easy—
so much can and will go wrong—
but on this March day of breeze and cloud
with the blossoms budding out
on the trees of the Tuileries
I think they might, they just might succeed—
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 Schooner.
