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The Warning
Joanne M. Clarkson

A honeybee landed on the back
of my bare hand. I was startled
by the weight of the tiny feet,
the urgency and exactness
of their tapping. I listened
with the nerves of my tendons.

Should I clap or dance in place?
Imitate rhythms that reveal
the purpose of my tribe?
Through cadence should I spell
weather into autumns
or times when winter
might become our only home?

How can I repeat this guardianship,
a knowledge so intimate
it can only be written under wings
in a dusting of pollen? Only spoken
in a garden where we choose again
and again, whether to believe the bees?

—
Joanne M. Clarkson’s fifth poetry collection, The Fates, won the Bright Hill Press annual contest and was published in 2017. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Western Humanities Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod, Poetry Northwest, and Alaska Quarterly Review. She received an Artist Trust Grant to complete her manuscript and an NEH grant to teach poetry in rural libraries. Clarkson has Master’s Degrees in English and Library Science, and has taught and worked as a professional librarian. After caring for her mother through a long illness, she re-careered as a Registered Nurse specializing in Home Health and Hospice Care.

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