Bees

By Colleen Addison

PROMPT — Joy is ...

in this country the bees write poems, their delicate feet lifting syllables of inspiration from the hearts of flowers, all those begonias and buzy Lizzies spilling out rhymes and rhythms and the matchless hum of the way words sound together, couplets tumbling out of trumpet blooms and tulips, from the dainty leaves of tropical fruit and out of the tops of coconuts; these insects in their yellow and black suits glorying in the creation, every blossom a muse when the hive wakes up in spring; instead of royal jelly the queens are fed on verse; the deaths of drones in their drama; the workers in toil chanting chanting; out of these cells comes honey? you ask, but no, it’s the sweetness of literature

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Colleen Addison earned a PhD in health information; she then promptly got sick herself. She now lives, writes and heals on a small island off the coast of Vancouver, Canada.