Propolis

Honeybees Survived for Weeks Under Volcano Ash After Canary
Islands Eruption
—New York Times headline, 4 December 2021

We glued the pores of our city shut and ate
and ate—why not? Locked down, we gorged sweet stores,
we waggle-danced, and buzzed, and drank. The end
had come, the earth burped up cantankerous fumes,
florescent flames where lavender bloomed. Honey
glowed, it rivered bright, it flowed and sang,
and we sang, too, forgetting flight, forgetting
sky, and petal shades and anther-dust

and thieves whose sugar-water payment schemes
offer Tate-and-Lyle austerity dreams
in lieu of flowers. A miracle, you call it,
when we emerge, unscathed—as if
we should have slept, or starved, or thinned the hive.
Fat as summer queens, we survive.

Hannah Silverstein is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her poems have appeared in Cider Press Review, LEON Literary Review, Whale Road Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Terroir Review, The Ekphrastic Review, SWWIM Every Day, and The New Guard. She lives in Vermont.