COLONY COLLAPSE DISORDER
(The Toronto Star, April 16, 2007)

Bees are disappearing.
Buzzing balls of busyness
forgot                    their way home.

(24 States cited widespread losses)

Hive hallways ring
              with the silence,
honeycombed absence.

(It’s as if the bees flew away
      and never came back…)

Pin-striped Atlas shrugged—
the weight too great to bear.

(1/3 of the food we eat
          requires bee pollination)

Shackled pollen hoppers,
nature’s chain
                    unlinked.

Apiarists weep
while the world sleeps
                    and dreams
honeyed complacency.

D. Ouellet

THE WATER MIGHT WALK

we are here because time once
said “I love you”

as easily as the water might walk
we were attached

at the hips like two apples
on a thin branch

waiting to become applesauce
in a pink bowl

is easier than mist grabbing at purple
lilacs on a June morning

back in 1985, that same water came
drop-by-drop standing

on white stones near our doorstep
and we listened as time took

two parts of our hydrogen for each
oxygen we shared

Tim J. Brennan (68degrees)

BARREN

I built my own constricting carapace
from chemicals ingested lavishly,
and wished, with fervor, merely to be numb.
Insensible, I watched myself become
a grim, distorted pasquinade of me,
devoid of kindness, sympathy and grace.

Insomnia, anxiety and grief
have made me recreant, bitter with fear.
I know, my love, that you’d be horrified
at my behavior since the day you died --
not, as you chaffed, in love within the year,
but still marooned on this spiritless reef.

Forgive, my love, the arid waste you’ve seen --
a year from now my garden will be green.

Mitchell Geller (EDowson)

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