Bees in the eave — I learn
the difference between hive
and swarm. No reply from
the beekeeper I hoped would
rehome them. Keep these
pollinators, our saviors.

Our son was served those 
papers, called crying. She,
a doctor, did she time it for
the oncoming shutdown?
Zoom court. Now he needs
us, after all the secrets, and
we can’t save him, but still.

I wear the night-sky mask
my friend sent me, but I’m
angry at those in the store
unmasked and not aware
of the one-way aisles, even
though just last week I too
missed those yellow arrows.

Here is where I should say
something about the politics
of the neglect, I suppose. We
are a family of journalists and
teachers and doctors. We have
our pensions. What can I say,
except listen, and be afraid.

Now the swarm has gone from
the eave but on the ground are 
the corpses, black bullets, beside
the bedroom door as if the glass
should slide for them. We hear
the animals are thriving without
us, so what about these our bees?

Earthlings, I want to say, as if we
came from the sky of my night-sky
mask, we are only ourselves, owl
and coyote and quail and javelina,
pale creatures, and now pack rats,
nesting in the sticks, bones, cactus
joints, and shinies of our compounds.

On earth in Texas, our son readies
for his children. His new apartment
faces a shooting range, and so I send
a white noise machine. In the sleeping
bag he took from the house, he sleeps
on the floor. He bought a folding chair.
Put this suicide number in your phone.

Always there is more to the picture.
I have raided my husband’s stash
of peanut-butter cups, hoping he
will not notice. Of course, I gave it
to him in his Christmas stocking.
And now it’s May, so there. What
will all our sad rituals mean now?

I come across the word waveson:
goods floating up from a shipwreck,
a bright, sleek word — my hand
to my son? a soft watery word?
Perhaps another poem. But here
is only the furious cut of my mouth
behind the mask, the fallen host

at our back door, the pale, swollen
ship languishing in the deep, cloud
plague. So let them in: Animals, come.