Dear Honeybees, the Wind Unhinges
Dawn Terpstra
Spring like a kite caught in racing clouds, in gyrating branches, like a plastic bag snared on a power line. West winds crowbar and rattle your hive—a skunk shaking and clawing to spill honey from the combs. Relentless winds blow for three days, wild as floral sheets flapping on a clothesline. Watch them tear and disappear, ghosts caught on a rising moon.
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My father said there is wisdom in a west wind. Freshly turned soil. Lift it and mold it, cold and damp to the touch. Dry it down, hoe and row it into fine black furrows. The same earth that dries and flies from a field after plowing and planting. Farmer after farmer watches the landscape haze brown with swirl. Topsoil blows like a sandstorm across a highway where semis and cars accordion. Headlights shine, flames erupt. A gust untethers souls from windows and pavement. They are gone before embers cool. Before the wind dies.
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You eat honey gleaned by last year’s wings, from pollen blown by last year’s breeze. From other days green and shimmering, no matter the soil from which bounty grows. What tragedies befall humans greedy with a hunger for more? Faith erodes like stirred soil on the crest of a wild, unhinged world. Smoky haze circles the space between stars.
