Poems by Erica Goss
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Ghost Hive
After colony collapse disorder surfaced around 2005, the losses approached one-third of all bees, despite beekeepers’ best efforts to ensure their health. - NY Times, 3/28/13
by Erica Goss
From Canary Summer 2015
Erica lives less than a mile from the Los Gatos Creek, home to a variety of migratory waterfowl and a former homeless encampment.
If they were dead
we could understand it:
compound eyes gone flat
abdomens dry and crisp
but they vanished
like the pictures I made as a child
like my imaginary friends
like my father – gone,
as if there was nothing
left between us – gone,
like sweetness
fading from the mouth
leaving us with nothing to mourn
and no one to punish –
we clean the hive
again.
© Erica Goss
My Daily Crows
by Erica Goss
From Canary Fall 2015
Their peppercorn voices,
their constant
need to talk: how quickly
they track my habits,
flying in and out
of my thoughts. Corvus,
jackdaws, ravens,
fishers, mathematicians,
athletes, schemers, scavengers.
I know they’re watching me.
They cross the street at my heels.
My food makes them smart.
I change things – they adapt.
Counterstrategy is the game.
I feel their wings in my hair.
They are the future:
the dark energy of my dormant faith,
my black sons and daughters.
Previously published at Escape Into Life
© Erica Goss