The bees are gone.
No more golden congregations
around the lavender – no hungry
pulse bumping cestrum flutes or red
tea tree petals. Most of all, I miss
that incessancy, that subsuming of the
one before the many, as if a city
crowded out the individual, drowned
its self-serving cries in a common weal,
commanding the flight to fresh nectar,
the return to fill empty combs.
—
Irene Adler was a poet and English teacher in Palo Alto, California, where she was also a co-owner of the company that invented the Aerobie flying ring and the Aeropress coffee maker. By the time of her death in October 2023, she had written over 2,000 poems spanning 25 years. These were collated and curated for a posthumous collection, Bone Flute, which will be published in Spring 2025 by Paloma Press.
