When the keeper has died,
whose hands have touched
so much honey,
the village will convene
to elect a successor
and to remember
the sweetness of his voice,
his dependable hymns,
the spell of smoke
and the hush just after.
While the elders
resist old rhythms
of grief, no one will speak
of the ancient belief —
how the beefather’s demise,
kept secret, could cause
the death of the hives
in the coming winter.
Then the question will rise
in a nervous murmur:
Who will tell the bees?
R.T. SMITH is Writer-in-Residence at Washington and Lee University, where he edits Shenandoah. The most recent of his four collections of stories is Sherburne (Stephen F. Austin U Press, 2012). His work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South, VQR, Southern Review and Esquire. A new book of poems, The Red Wolf: A Dream of Flannery O’Connor will appear in 2013. Smith lives in Rockbridge County, VA, with his wife, the writer Sarah Kennedy.
All poems reprinted, by permission of author, from Messenger, Louisiana State University Press, 2001.