Of Bees and Mountains

The steady sound of bumblebees
begins sotto voce,
when the morning rays
reach the tall yellow jewelweed
adjacent to my campsite.
As bees go to work in their earthy business,
the volume swiftly rises
to an ecstatic electric hum.
All day long,
there is no ceasing of their sound.

Here on top of the mountain,
their murmur lies on the silence
like floating music,
like a slow sailboat of buzzing,
though the bee sound seems to come
from a lifegiving furnace
at the center of the earth.
They brook no distraction
from their fervent task of sucking nectar.
How the sound stirs me, how
it nourishes my ear,
how it inspires my diligence.
All day I hear the sisters’
backdrop doowop production.

All day I watch
the sun and the mountains play.
When a ridge is alight,
it waves its particular grace
back to the star that illumines it.
I cannot read a book or look away.
I cannot listen to any other music.
I become a hovering angel
soaking up the goodness
of the bodacious bees,
of the ancient Blue Ridge Mountains
that seem to lie so still
but are alive, and could easily rise,
and stretch themselves like giants.

Silent butterflies flutter by
while I listen, while I watch.
I don’t care what time or day it is.
I am a god smiling
at suspended mountains.
But no, because of this concert,
this moment, this view,
I choose to be an earthling!
To drink the waves of flowing mountains,
I choose a life of senses.
For the sake of a single ridge
with twilight falling into the cove behind it,
I give up godhood gladly.

When at last the light
takes its measured leave,
the buzz of bees likewise
imperceptibly softens,
until the Maestra
brings both to a close,
pianissimo.
And I the blessed listener
am given back
to the lifegiving underpinning
upon which the wild chaos
of natural sounds
has all day rested—
and that rich fabric called silence
sends me and the bees to sleep.

©Susa Silvermarie 2015