“'That bee knows something', Vanessa thinks” -Chris T

Vanessa and her environs

—

Finding Vanessa,
Requires triangulation;
Like building a map, he thinks,

A cartography of place and purpose.

“And I am right here,” she thinks.

Not hard to find, clear and
Self-evident. Lots of truths plainly
There: A list of merits,
A body of work.


And yet her location evolves
In steadying cycles, her local
Topography and her repeated
Mornings, the discreet joys of known spaces
Observed, then notional,

Clear and then elastic, thoughts at once fact
Yet notably conditional, premised by
Coalitions or wise counsel.

If there is a gravitas of place there is also a process
Of birthing or laboring to build. Call it an oasis model,
A skein of islands, an archipelago of stable spaces.
One refuge deserves another
And in going big we detect a thousand lights in myriad
Warm kitchens.

Connect the dots, now I’m finding her, even as her voice sensibly
Reminds us

“I am right here.”

And on the map she is indeed here.

And here.
And we know we are getting somewhere.
We are on the map,
In our places of shelter,
Our safe harbors.

Vanessa is at home
And so are we.

And homes cannot be undervalued,
Or shouldn’t be.

It’s not a difficult formula,
It’s all in plain sight,
Just layered, not one map now
But many.

More voices now:

“I am here.”

“And here.”

All from one place,
A place of places, a garden
Of gardens, a kitchen
Of kitchens

A cartographer’s palace of map rooms,
Every life a map, every map indicating

Home is here.



—



Vanessa is in her garden
And there is a bee
Gathering pollen.

And the bee, sensing the newness
Of humans, recent arrivals, wonders
At her shape, how many bees are required
To interpret the human form, its
Multiplicity, people walking or dancing,
What are we trying to say as we move
Or linger in natural places?

The bee imagines our minds,
It uses the facets of its eye organs
To visualize a colony of memory,
A mansion of rooms, each identifiable

By scent, each space a repository,
Each room a creche, every silo conjoined,
Nectars becalmed beside corridors
Nestled in bee architecture.

And the bee reflects on its methods,
How far can bees burrow into
Human perception? What can bees see
In our caves?

The bee is in a “we” mode,
They gravitate that way,
He stretches his envelope.
What do you think?


He’s buzzing, Vanessa might be smiling.
What questions are answered
Via speculation?

What questions are allowed?

When do we notice perfection?

Silence.

As often as a bee?


“Unlikely.”

A chorus amidst flowering plants,
Repeated phrases,
Songs that thrum,
Historical aural muralism, pluralism,
Vast tapestries in three dimensions,
One garden encapsulating unrecorded time.

Oh, wait. It is recorded:

“We’re recording now,” different languages
But a distinct, if buzzing harmony.
Other insects are tuning in,
Family communication of a sort,
Cooperation, reduced borders
Between bugs but perhaps not with birds.

“Come closer, no, not that close.
Yes, that’s better, your eye portals
Are finally in focus. Someday
We will figure you out.”

The garden barely conceives of us, it’s true,

But it tries. A garden will always try
To understand its own features,
Including humans.

Many organisms get it:

We are the garden. The bee
In speculative human mode
Paints reality with aspirational conjoinment.

But the jump is far. Shared values?

Such abruptly ascendent creatures, we are
Constantly remaking an ecology
That prefers to make itself.

The bee thinks in spans of time
Beyond mortal logic,
Million year segments,
80 million encirclements
Of a round sun.

Before that:

50 million years of learning to build a hive.


Surely Vanessa is bemused her
Human world will need only 80 to 130 million years
To enact harmony on earth.

Oh bees are under-represented,
not least their individuality,
Intact as this lone bee enjoys his day,
Feeling the sunlight, dazzled by colors
And satiating olfaction.

The bee dallies, alights on a pebble
That wobbles, he made that wobble
He notes, he wobbles that pebble

Again. One more time

Until it moves, the wind is in his feelers
A wind swirl of clover infuses
His insect sensors. He tastes
The scent on his tongues,
Along delicate antennae.

When bees exult are they happy
Their bee world is specialized
And partly unseen?

Probably yes.

“That bee knows something,”

Vanessa thinks.

“There is more to learn here,”

The bee emotes.

The garden collectively exhales.

—


-Chris T