Struck

Not clean, a kill is never clean;
hanging limbs, dangling edges
of wings of bees, thunderheads
selling door to door.

The hives say we are mothers,
we have babies in the bathtub.
They come anyway, trampling
the un-mowed grass. Some bees

leave the hive for the fracking fields,
who can blame them, the problem:
itinerants aren’t native and natives
know best forage. A reporter

writes the story, a reader wilts the stinger,
the story disappears, like one-third
of the bees, with them go nuts, berries.
Itinerant bees are the culprit say

local bee growers, home-grown bees
who never leave the farm are best, but if you
stay on the farm you’re lightening-struck
because you’ve stood in one place too long.