A Brief Exhibition of Bumblebees [or] Another Unsent Letter to Sweet Emily During a Time of Our National and Psychological Distress
timston johnston
More than a few weeks now to think about these bumblers. Not as many lately (cooler nights and all) but plenty around—movements in my peripheral; sound waves slipping through fog. They’re after the oregano. Sunflowers were planted specifically for them (usurped by finches—ironic chirps, them, reap-reap, then: attack) but no landings. Maybe the pollen’s not ripe? Not much showing except for a day or three after buds open, all that yellow detachable crustiness lining the stamen. Only hours on display before wiped away by gravity and breeze.
Is stamen singular and plural like deer or time? Plant anatomy (read: any biological complex) is beyond me.
Terms I remember:
nuclei nucleus nucleoid membrane
rhinoplasty photosynthesis pastrami
The bees don’t know these words. Do they need to? Or want to? Fuck, maybe; maybe they’ve got this whole world figured out, the chemistry and algebra of existence. Succumbing, satiating, moving on. Every being a task, every soul a purpose. Isn’t that Nirvana? Is Nirvana singular?
I write at different times but in the span of the same season. As I say, Mist this morning, conversely, I mean, Sun this morning, or I mean, Wind this morning; Bus exhaust this morning; Presence of God this morning. All true, yet all faded lies indifferent to their realities.
They say:
we hungry, starlet beauty marks, we pock daisies
roll call: twenty-six pillowed on the underside of the goldenrod
nose-to-nose with a honeybee, the leg of the table, neighborhood gossip ]—this morning.
tucked into siding, lonely, unafraid, fixed on blue and shadow
bewildered by yellow chair, lied to, faith abandoned
Always perceived these bees to be without a home, like a string of mid-afternoon commuters, not knowing if they’re coming or going. I’ve discovered they (bumblebees) do belong—in colonies (like traffic), their nests in particularly unparticular places, out of sight vacancies, liberated. If you ever come across one, you’ll find an odd sense of messy uniformity: mismatched comb walls, the insulation of dried grass and discarded snakeskin. These together smell of heated vinegar; they either enjoy this or don’t notice. Not much honey; unlike the honeybees, who stockpile to survive the winter in place, the bumbler’s end is most likely nigh, their spring a lingering dream.
I often wake feeling the same prognosis. Though, I plan, as if hope is a seedpod. My what-if feigns garden-straddled posts, boxes, the design molded from Internet instructions: six walls (rather, four, plus floor and ceiling), air holes, straw. They’re to do the rest (unless wasps and/or mold first accept the invitation). Bumblers need a queen, and, of course, you can buy her and a hive; they’ll be shipped and come accustomed to any homestead. Or fail. These fad projects, whether it’s garden boxes or cookie recipes, always end the same way for me. $160—too much money to kill bees. Still, what a thought: welcomed home daily by dozens of fuzzy orbs who’ve finally found my sunflowers.
No great loss, as part of me knows public opinion against the urban beekeeper is a high, high hurdle.
Adverse neighbors and overprotective parents dismiss the golden rule of bees (an unbothered bee equals an unbothered person). You’re more likely to stab yourself with a pen or sit on upturned keys than be sought by these Buddha bees. If provoked, one (emphasis: one; do not read: nest) is more likely to put frenzied distance between itself and danger than persistently pursue the threat. Neighbors will cite the behavior of wasps, who’ve gone against such agendas, and lump every stinger together. Is there ever any logical ground while debating fear?
The but-me fragilist’s go-to stronghold, the Bible, states, bees swarm (Judges 14:8), bees surround (Psalm 118:12). I have no retort other than open-palmed gestures toward the what-would-be visual truth, so I have no leg to stand on until the heavens boom, IF THOU STUNG BY THY PASSIVE CREATION, DALE, THOU FUCKING EARNED IT. What’s the chance of this old, wayward Catholic getting a solid from Capt. Cloud in times like these?
I suppose I’m blessed in other ways.
Adversely to other bees, who stick to the brightest hues they can find, bumblers, captivated by any beige bloom, will, fittingly, bumble about and pollinate anything. This is not how they have received their name. The origin of bumble is bomben, referring to the buzz made in flight, and there, the low fart in the weeds, over time, was the bomben-ing bee, the bombenbee, the bumblebee. It’s only we who have reversed its meaning, assigning, yet again, a lazy interpretation, unfairly tacking this unappreciated bumble onto the bumblefuck, the distracted, drunken oaf, the planks between load-bearing walls, frittering about just like everybody else whose purpose is the failed preservation of the now.
I’ve been actively distancing myself from that notion but find myself prone to bumbling around the neighborhood after dinner. It’s there that nothing is expected of me, and I spend my time changing sidewalks, waving to deck-dwellers and inventorying the contents of their recycle bins.
I like walking under the arches of overlapping limbs. It sparks a happy memory: a field, an early-angled October sun; golden wheat, an outlying cavalcade of peak-autumn hardwood. The heavy vapor of burning dew, those ghosts determined to take the earth with them. However, this is challenged by an image of the future. The same field there, but a nearing-winter overcast pressed into dense carbon—a dried, powdered pigment lining a gummed chrysalis, spinning in perpetual dusk. A dead forest blocks the easterly view, its depths within similarly dour. Both layers here interchange until the two are one dying invincibility. Mercy is an invented word. I could shout it into the depths of this forest, but the echo would garble and settle into the same mulch of the hope who had meandered in years before.
Unexpected turns, these walks.
Sometimes I catch the sunset.
Sometimes I kick an interesting pebble down the gutter.
Autumn is the best time for viewing evening skies. Even there, bees, though not outright.
In the north, we’re used to bears, dogs, a hunter, the hiding, early-morning hare—we have the dragon, too, the bull, the warrior-god, a gathering of sisters, a crab with a disastrous name. Inside that crab: lurking bees, a harbored cluster that, had I known in childhood, would have taken my eyes away from the easy-to-find belt. Behind, or rather, up and left of Orion’s shoulder (Betelgeuse (which would be reddish star to the left, above the belt)) is a hard-to-see upside-down Y slinking away (not from Orion, but Hercules) injured (rather, killed (by Hercules)). Between the crown of the crab and just before the junction of leg and pincher is a grouping—Praesepe, The Beehive—made up of over 70 stars as faint to us as the gods who put them there.
We have no constellation designated specifically for the bumblebee, but we do have space junk and the power to shape mythology. We can assign those satellites with a more dignified purpose as those busy drones buzz along the horizon, humming with the passing highway traffic. Let’s say if one flies toward the hive, one must close their eyes or else the bee won’t find its way home. This way we’re the heroes, saints painting the eaves. And as hopeless and fantastical as this may seem, if we will a place for the lost bumblebee, we will the opportunity for somebody to do it for us, and, finally, we might end up where we belong, even if, by luck, we stumble over it in the dark.
Timston Johnston
Timston Johnston lives in Marquette, MI, where his neighbor has had Christmas decorations up since October. He aspires to be a supermarket coupon flyer model but doesn't know if he needs to be a sociopath or just look like one. Nobody will return his e-mails.