From the tips of her diaphanous wings to her six feet,
the bee I watch sip nectar from the dandelion is true.
The pesticide sprayed on the lawn where the dandelions grow?
A lie that lurks in an airborne mist. Its claim to be Hell
on weeds but safe for insects settles on the bee who, like us,
does not feel the flap of a butterfly’s wing and the chaos
it will unleash: hive collapse, unpollinated blossoms,
crop failure, a future sunk beneath a memory of abundance.
Neonícotinoids—a word nothing rhymes with or wants to, lost
in the small print on the bottle in the groundskeeper’s shed
and, let’s be honest, lurking on our own garden shelf? How else
our lawn, plush enough to cushion a rolling croquet ball. And
what of the bee who waggles the hive to follow her direction
and shares the stage with tainted dust—her colony’s destruction.
—
Cynthia Knorr is the author of A Vessel of Furious Resolve (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in an array of poetry journals. After a career as a medical writer in New York City, she relocated to rural New Hampshire where she enjoys listening to the birds and tramping through the woods. She serves on the editorial staff of the poetry journal Touchstone, is a 2025 Best of the Net nominee, and was longlisted for the 2024 Sappho Prize for Women Poets.
