Poems by Daisy Bassen

American Sonnet in Rome

by Daisy Bassen

From Canary Summer 2024

Daisy lives on the west shore of Narragansett Bay on land that was originally home to the Pequot.

We are still arguing about the bees,
how they cannot be more real than real,
taking the remark as a pronouncement
when it may have only been a poor translation,
thought to word, word to word,
sight to perception, particle to wave.

We didn’t discuss how few bees roved
through the carefully wild flowers,
but we watched a bee sip from a drop of water,
shaking its ass, thirst so basic we understood
without an interpreter. What has been lost
is all around us, distant as our sweat becomes
filling the air, a heady cologne scented
then gone beyond recall, too quick to sting.

© Daisy Bassen

Stung

by Daisy Bassen

From Canary Summer 2024

It’s possible that bees, in great profusion,
would still scare me the way a single bee did
when I was a child, but I’ve learned to count them
when I’m in my garden and walking through
my neighborhood; I’ve learned to worry
when I see one paused, still on the asphalt.
She might not fly again.
When I was younger
than my youngest child, I was stung
by a drowning bee, my hand final in the way
the water wasn’t. I held it against her
but mildly, my hand swollen for a week, made
a boxing glove despite salve, ice. A knock-out,
when I couldn’t have saved either of us.

I’d look at her now, too heavy to rise, beyond
rescue, and I’d say One not I’m sorry.
The stamens she wouldn’t visit would be legion.