The Thousand Armed Beehive

of birth, water and bees.

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Inspired both by my growing pregnancy and also my deepening conviction against the piping of the irrigation ditches in our region, I wrote the following essay for a literary celebration that kicks off the Mountain Harvest Festival in our little town here each year. I wrote it in the summer of 2021 and it was selected to be read that fall.

Before I knew I was pregnant, I thought something was terribly wrong with me. In search of re-balancing, I booked a session with our local Hoshindo practitioner, who uses the venom of bees, through an ancient Japanese practice, along certain tsubos or points along meridian lines to bring renewal and healing. During that session, I had a vision that an enormous bee was growing inside me.

That evening I realized I was pregnant.

Thus, the poetry of life.

☼ ☾ ☀︎

The Thousand Armed Beehive

If a beehive could incarnate as a woman, she might emerge from the cosmos between her mother’s legs humming a current of universal peace. She might then, reaching skyward, find the flowers of her mother’s chest and, drinking deeply, she might alchemize that milk into sweet honey that never spoils. Her millions of wings might be seen fluttering in those gentle moments between worlds, when the sky is cobalt blue and twinkling, when the memory of her humanness fades like the old world is crumbling before our very eyes.

If a beehive could incarnate as a woman, she might twirl from sunflower to aster, pausing to collect the ancient web of life on her limbs and bring it home to transmute in her warm, golden, vibrating kitchen. She might secretly sprout a thousand arms to fill jars and pots with the thick fluid of her alchemy and her body, as woman, might glow like the cauldron of primordial resonance she is; woman, hive and honey. 

This beehive incarnate might be seen etching new symbols into old canyon walls, marking the time of renewal and rebirth. She might be seen smashing microwaves and setting fire to cell towers and smart meters. She might invest in a laser gun to play cowboys and indians with the machines in the sky. She might even be caught thieving thousands of bottles of roundup to bury deep into the earth, never to be seen again.