Bumblebees

So very long ago

there were bumblebees here

slow and ponderous

like old World War II cargo aircraft

buzzing through the skies.

They loved the asters and the frostweed

the goldeneye and palafoxia.

In the prairies

the bluestem rose tall,

turning terra cotta in the cold.

The switchgrass massive and light,

interwoven with the fall air.

The Indiangrass bringing its yellow flames 

to the darkening colors of the autumn.

The big bumbly bumblebees

flew slow from blossom to blossom

slurping up nectar,

muddling in the pollen with their big bumbly feet, 

tracking it everywhere they flew,

to the joy and delight of the flowers.

They were here with their cousins, 

the solitary bees.

Ascetic, tiny, sipping like anorexics.

But still the pollen grains on their feet,

transferring them to new flowers 

to cycle life into the next season.

So very long ago

there weren’t any honeybees.

Those upstart European imports, soft,

needing amenities and care.

There were just the wild prairies

grown over ancient seas,

the savannah trees intermittent and burn-hardened.

Then the honeybees came

and elbowed their way into the frostweed and goldeneye

but still there was enough

and all lived together.

Then we came, European, soft, needing amenities.

And, too smart for our own good, we discovered too much

in the name of science and progress and commerce.

How to clear the land with the napalm of the bulldozers and shredders.

How to kill the weeds with carcinogens

that seeped their dark death to the innocent grasses.

How to kill the bees with neonicotinoids

and find their little bodies, stiff and dead, by the water.

The bumblebees grew fewer and fewer,

and as I tended my land, I found less and less of them,

buzzily muddling their way into the flowers.

But I gardened organic, banned the potent ugly toxins

on my little piece of land, and hoped.

In the last year or two, they have started to return.

All sizes: huge snuffling hogs of bumblebees

Medium moderate bumblebees

and even diminutive daintyish ones, though still

unmistakably squarish and bumbly.

The honeybees live here too, in their hive by the edge of the woods,

underneath the spinning fan sculptures.

But they do not fight the bumblebees 

or harass the little solitary ones.

There is goldeneye and aster enough for all, 

and frostweed enough even for the monarchs and emperors

when they migrate through.

It won’t be so significant when I am gone

but I love to think of the bumblebees

and hope I played a tiny part

in their going on.

—Elayne Lansford