Poetry
Before the Bees Died
By Leigh Tuckman
Although it was November and the ground
was coated in a thin layer of frost,
when I woke in the middle of the night
my sheets clung to my body, wet with sweat.
I shook them from me, grabbed the telephone,
and dialed your number, long distance be damned.
You answered on the second ring. I asked,
“Are the frangipani blooming? Does
the cockatoo still perch in your back garden,
in the jacaranda tree?”
You laughed,
and answered, “What are you doing calling
at this hour? It must be, what, three a.m.
where you are…”
”You said that I could call
you anytime.”
”That’s true. What is it, then?”
“I had bad dreams.”
”Again?”
”Again. A whole
string of them, each melting into the next.
At first, I was a convict, old and grey
and looking back upon my long career
of sentences, for mostly petty crimes,
but for so many that it seemed I’d scarcely
been out of jail a day in forty years.
The later ones were all for drug abuse
and breaking my parole; before those I’d
been caught trying to steal a car, I think,
and before that, snatching somebody’s purse.
My mind stretched back and back, remembering,
until I hit the day before the first
time I’d been caught. It seemed to last forever,
warm and calm, but thick with knowing it
was bound to end, like the one day of sun
before seven long years of ceaseless rain,
like the night a year ago we had dinner
on Lavender Bay, taking little bites,
as if eating dinner slowly meant that time
would slow down too, as if the night would last
and I could stay with you, and not return
to New Jersey at all, not fly back home
at 7:45 the next morning,
not have to live through four more months of winter.”
You were quiet on the other end, and then
you said, “Go on, then. You said there were more?”
“Yes. Then I had a flashback, or a dream
within a dream – I became someone else,
a fisherman living along the coast
of Massachusetts. There were no more fish;
they’d all been fished, or died some other way.
My town had too, the people moving out
as the fish left, unable to survive
without a source of income. I was last
to go, still living in a shack, alone
with the rocks and the grey water, and my wife,
who hated me.”
”Your wife?”
”I told you,
I wasn’t myself. I was somebody else,
this fisherman.”
”All right.”
”She hated me,
but we were once in love. It was the cold,
and being hungry all the time. She blamed
me for not catching any fish, though there
were none to catch. One day, she left. I guess
I should have left town, too, but I recalled
being a little boy of eight or nine,
one Christmas when the house was full of friends
and family, long before the town went bad.
I remembered the yellow glow of the lights,
the smell of the fireplace and my aunts
all cooking in the kitchen, the chatter
in the background, and my grandfather
picking me up to spin me round and round,
his flannel shirt and feeling like I’m flying.”
“You should have gone anyway.”
”Yes, I know.
They were all dead, and there was nothing left.
What could i do, though? There were no more fish,
not there or anywhere along the coast,
so what was left for me? I felt useless,
defeated, like the aging coal miner
after the mine shuts down, and all he has
is severance pay, and his black lung, and death
to look forward to. At some point you say,
‘There’s nothing left, and never will again
be anything left,’ and so you stay on,
trying to pretend the memory
of being happy brings you happiness…”
“I think it’s worse that way.”
”I’m sure it is.
It’s tempting, though, to wallow in your grief.”
“I guess it’s like the way when you break up
with someone who you really thought you loved,
you half don’t want the pain to go away
because you don’t want to forget how much
you cared about her, before it all went bad.”
“Exactly.”
”Well. Was that the final dream?”
“No, there’s one more. Just before I woke up
I had a dream, or more a memory,
of standing in your kitchen making tea.
I’d bought that jar of honey, you remember,
the one with the piece of honeycomb inside?”
“I recall.”
”I put a spoonful of it in my mug,
then licked the spoon. I can taste how it tasted
even now, half-melting off the spoon into
my mouth, sticky and sweet and somehow almost
smooth, almost golden, like the color was
the taste, like sugar but warmer, like nothing
that makind could ever make… and then
using the spoon to skim the melted wax
that rose to the top of my cup away,
flicking it with a finger to the sink.”
We sat in silence for a moment, then;
you perhaps unsure of what to say,
me remembering what felt a better time,
a year ago, before the prices rose
for honey and for almonds, back before
I left Australia and the comfort of
your presence and the jacaranda trees,
before the world was running out of bees.
“I’m sorry, babe,” you whispered through the phone,
your voice sounding very small and far away.
“I know. Me too,” I answered quietly,
and after a moment added, “I miss you.”
“I know. I miss you too,” you said, and then,
“I need to head to dinner soon, and you
should try to go back to bed.”
I nodded,
though you couldn’t see it, and replied,
“Okay. Enjoy your meal.”
”Thanks. Sleep well, Leigh.”
“Goodnight.” I put the phone away and sat
back in my bed, and closed my eyes, and tried
to pretend I was not sitting alone.