Colophon

More than the beetles turned russet, sunset, dragging their shield, more than the crickets who think it’s evening all afternoon, it’s the bees I love this time of year. Sated, maybe drunk, who’ve lapped at the hips of too many flowers for one summer but still must go on hunting, one secret closing, another ensuing, picking lock after lock, rapping the glass, getting stuck in a puddle of dish soap, almost winter, almost dark, reading far past the last paragraph into the back blank page, acknowledgments, and history of type. I think when my head finally cracks out will come one of those ravening scouts autumnal with hunger beyond any sipping, swallowing, beyond the hive’s teeming factory’s needs. I think maybe then, when I’m dying like a bug in a puddle of dish soap, I’ll be relieved, my wings wet capes and not working, antennae slicked back and not working, eye that sees the ruby above going out, eye that sees the ruby within getting brighter as I drag myself to a tomato ripening on the window sill, reddest, softest island of my last planet, last aureola, stinger waving and useless. I’ll wait then, while air from the north rushes gulf air, a tree indicating wildly, each leaf woke in orange outcry. It won’t be suffering, exactly. Rain coming, then gone, a chill that means all my barbarous kind are alone and perishing, our unrecognizable young buried and waiting, bodies of fire becoming bodies of air. I don’t think there’s any way to prepare.