Lord Rooker’s Requiem
I saw a bee in winter. Velvet fleece
of sun and midnight keeps him warm. Yet, strange
no clover patch or summer field of wheat
entice. He’s unaware of climate change.
The mobiles’ waves disorient his head.
His hive is void by mites and throng disease
and disappeared through pesticidal spread.
This worker thrums a requiem for bees.
From tiny loss, the chaos starts a chain;
The knell of death for flora, vetch and grain.
As immigrant and Bombus breeds compete,
leaves Sichuan girls to pollinate by hand.
Inter our heads as soil transforms to sand.
A glass of mead will never taste as sweet.
Lord Rooker – 2007 food-and-farming minister predicted the extinction of the honeybee by 2017.
'Lord Rooker's Requiem was first published in The Interpreter's House, #51 by editor Simon Curtis. Here we are in 2018 and the honeybee is still hanging in there, thank goodness. An article in the Sunday Times inspired the poem, which has now settled in my first collection, Jiggle Sac.