You blame me for the bees.
I am as alarmed as you
and I’m trying, trying so hard
to make sense of this crazy world;
the blanked out sky,
the septic sea and the ne’er fallowed land.
I escape to some imagined past;
walk around empty churches,
the anonymous gravestones
homes for lichen and moss
where no bee is ever seen,
not even on the boundary edge
where gravestones are lined,
removed from the patch of earth
they once marked, forever.
But my meanderings, I see they don’t impress.
I talk of the dead, you say I don’t care,
that I’m not doing enough.
But we all live in this purgatory,
trapped somewhere between happiness
and hell, in a toxic cauldron of opinion
where only one truth will survive,
a truth that is toxic to most –
though enshrined in the bee

copyright Francis Barker 2019

All they care about is the lawn and the hedge;
the sight of a weed, a dandelion,
and all hell breaks loose
until it is removed, destroyed.
Three times a year
the evergreen hedge is trimmed,
a martial operation of precision and angst –
I can almost predict the day.
But who am I to judge,
peering through net curtains
at life’s absurdities
and the pointlessness of it all?

copyright Francis Barker 2019