Kelly R. Samuels is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She is the author of two chapbooks: Words Some of Us Rarely Use (Unsolicited Press) and Zeena/Zenobia Speaks (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in Split Rock Review, RHINO, Inscape, and SWWIM. She lives in the upper Midwest.
Bees’ Work in the Maoxian Valley
In the grass on the slope near the lake.
Lying and slumbering
and then wakened.
The sting on the sole
with the wail following.
Over there – plying of the blossom.
All the gray nests tipped
parasols under the eaves.
The stonecrop’s bloom
unseen, so many.
So few. Here
where we climb, pollinating
with hand the apple’s five-leaved flower
first pink and then white.
The moist loamy soil
and sun, and this – how to do
what has been done
naturally, as if born to it.
So quiet – the bent stick
and tuft of bird’s feather.
No buzz or hum heard.
Clementine Unbound 