Happy Holidays! I hope yours are brimming with magic and poetry. I had the pleasure of participating once again in the "Winter Poem Swap" whipped up by our own sparkling and generous Tabatha Yeatts. I was paired with the delightful Keri Collins Lewis, who sent me the poem below.
I felt like the Universe was smiling, because Keri's family has a beekeeping farm, and she also sent me a box of goodies from it (wish you could smell the candle and taste the honey!), in addition to this marvelously educational poem. I had, just a few weeks before, met a beekeeping family at a holiday market - their booth was across from my artsyletters booth. I ended up buying jars of honey and little beeswax candles and such for Christmas presents for friends and family. And, as I told Keri, I'm the kind that buys something for others that I really want myself - ;0) - so I was more than thrilled to be on the receiving end of all the honey goodness from her Prairie Blossom Bee Farm. And just what are her bees up to this time of year...?
T'was the Day Before Solstice
T’was the day before Solstice and far from the hive
The beekeeper worried if her bees were alive.
She’d left supers full of fine honey, pure gold
in hopes that her bees would survive winter’s cold.
When out in the bee yard there ‘rose such a buzz,
The beekeeper dashed to see what the fuss was.
The sun shone so brightly the temperature soared
And out of the hive all the worker bees roared.
They dipped and they swooped as they stretched their cramped wings
They explored the bare landscape and longed for warm Spring.
As afternoon passed, sun and temperature dropped,
The bees’ winter waltzing slowed down and then stopped.
And she thought that they hummed, racing home for the night,
“A sweet season to all, may your new year be bright!”
©Keri Collins Lewis. All rights reserved.
By Keri Collins Lewis
For Robyn Hood Black
December 2013
Winter Poem Swap
Author’s Note:
The Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, marks a turning point in the bees’ season. Once the days begin to get longer, the queen gears up for her egg-laying season to begin. To read more, visit http://romancingthebee.com/2012/12/21/the-winter-solstice-and-the-bees/.
Now, bet you learned something too, eh?
[If you'd like to see the poem I wrote for Keri, buzz on over to her blog, Keri Recommends. I had to work a bee into my poem as well.]
And then catch all the poetry buzz over at A Year of Reading, where Fearless Poetry Friday Leader Mary Lee has our Roundup today. (I'll try to catch up later - on the road doing a bit of holiday hive-hopping on our side of the world!)