Poems by Anna Sims Bartel

Accidental Bees

by Anna Sims Bartel

From Canary Spring 2023

Anna stewards 72 acres of Northern Allegheny Plateau, where the hemlock forest teaches her about anticipation of grief; healthy beeches next to diseased ones offer lessons of strength in diversity; the steady seeps on the ridge embody the basic generosity of our planet, as they feed into the upper Six Mile Creek watershed and from there into the Ithaca Reservoir and into us.

In winter, my friend called
To ask if I would help keep bees.

Of course, I said, thrilled
With the invitation to care for
Something, to help heal a wound.

But she was too busy and I
Was too busy and the time to order

The necessary three-pound package
Of compact and likely angry bees
Came and went.

She took the hive boxes
And stacked them in the field,

Behind the hoophouse and compost piles,
Where they were found by wild bees,
Unasked for, an obvious grace.

To our busy they brought their
Own, mocking our excuses, our arrogance
In thinking bees depend on us.

Like the hummingbird and other
Miracles, all they needed

was the stage,
the open, the waiting.

Bean Germination

by Anna Sims Bartel

From Canary Spring 2023

The first step is moisture
Surrounding, permeating,
Swelling the seed
The skin splits
The seed fractured by its own
New growth,
A root spearing downward
For days, it works down deeper
Then small lateral rootlets
Move out, stretching sideways across soil, an anchor, or a cross
More rootlets, more claiming of space and belonging,
The plant thinks of emerging into air
It grows, of all things, a spine, a stem
And uncurls like a yogi
Up into light,
It sheds the last brown wrapper of its past
And realizes it wants arms
They snake out from the sides and
Unfurl like wings, grace, movement
A miracle, a solar catchment
An innovation of light

Only then, with wings dry and stable
in its anchor bed of earth,
Does it imagine fruit.