American Life in Poetry: ‘Bees Were Better’ by Shihab Nye
The University of Minnesota Press has published a fine collection of bee poems, “If Bees are Few.” Here’s one by one of my favorite poets, Naomi Shihab Nye, who lives in San Antonio. Her most recent book is “Famous” from Wings Press.
Bees Were Better
In college, people were always breaking up.
We broke up in parking lots,
beside fountains.
Two people broke up
across a table from me
at the library.
I could not sit at that table again
though I did not know them.
I studied bees, who were able
to convey messages through dancing
and could find their ways
home to their hives
even if someone put up a blockade of sheets
and boards and wire.
Bees had radar in their wings and brains
that humans could barely understand.
I wrote a paper proclaiming
their brilliance and superiority
and revised it at a small café
featuring wooden hive-shaped honey-dippers
in silver honeypots
at every table.
Poem copyright 2008 by Naomi Shihab Nye, from “If Bees Are Few: A Hive of Bee Poems” (University of Minnesota Press, 2016), and reprinted by permission of the author and publisher. American Life in Poetry is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited submissions.