Poems by Aubrey Johnson
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Colony Collapse Disorder
by Aubrey Johnson
From Canary Summer 2018
Aubrey currently lives on the baked, red earth of the Lower Cimarron watershed, though she grew up in the Land of Clouded Waters, far to the north.
Ten million hives derelict,
and we know nothing except
sometimes we find orphaned
wings, thin panes of micro stained
glass gilded, fallen to our floors,
just as sometimes we find in the closet
his penny loafers, left behind,
and we are not sure what we miss
except that it is gone,
and we will someday die
without it.
If it were disease
or an equinox or vampire
mites or pesticides,
maybe it would scare us less
than this mass exodus
invisible, this cause we cannot
know except through weak analogy:
sometimes someone drives away
and leaves no forwarding address, doesn’t
call or write or say goodbye, becomes as vapor
freed from the boiling pot to evanesce.
© Aubrey Johnson