Poems by Staci Mercado

The First Last Days of Bombus Affinis

by Staci Mercado

From Canary Spring 2022

Staci lives among the fertile soils of the Upper Mississippi region where bald eagles and red-tailed hawks rule the skies.

I wake from an afternoon nap and shuffle out to the mailbox. My sister’s voice echoes in my head: Every time I call you’re sleeping. You’ll sleep your life away. I know she’s right, but most days I don’t even make it out to the mailbox, so I’m making progress.

The wind picks up, rustling the blossoms on the crabapple tree. It shakes loose a dead bumblebee that falls to the driveway. Her six legs, dusted with yellow pollen, curl in as if hugging the stamen of a flower. Her black eyes shine, seeming curious, seeming courageous. Perfectly formed wings of chitin sprout from her fuzzy black and yellow thorax. They remain erect and ready for flight—no form of injury visible.

The first ant forager finds her and heads back to tell the others. I imagine the colony swarming her and pick her up by a wing, though I’m scared of her waking, stinging.

I forget about the mail and bring her inside. “Anyone want to see a bumblebee?” I ask.

My husband and four boys are scattered about the house. I am an insect lover, spider rescuer. They remember jars of fat wolf spiders and refuse to come. Only my youngest son responds. “You’re awake, Mama?” He comes as close as he dares, which is to say, not close at all. Arms-length. “I’m scared of bees,” he says, shudders.

We examine her together, name her parts: thorax, stinger, proboscis, compound eyes. I point out a small patch of rusty color on her abdomen. “Why do you think it’s dead?” he asks.

“I’m not sure,” I tell him, though I suspect I know why. I don’t tell him that Bombus affinis, the rusty-patched bumblebee, is endangered.

We look out into the crabapple tree, its boughs arching over the driveway where I found her. Not a bad way to die, if that was how she went—sucking nectar and collecting pollen for the family. In danger or endangered, we move. Then we drop—just like that.

“Why did you pick it up?” He dares to get a bit closer, his brown eyes widen.

“I want to remember her,” I say as I imagine a world without bees. I place her in a canning jar and leave the top off in case she’s taking a long nap and decides to sleep walk, sleep fly.

“You’re saving the bees,” he says.

The next morning our purple lilacs burst forth after evening rains, somewhere underground a bumblebee stirs, and I wake.