POETRY: MADELINE BASSNETT

COLONY COLLAPSE
 
Survivors crawl across
withered black comb, invisible
 
apocalypse, sisters wandering
lost in the corn fields, seduced
 
by filaments of silk, the toxic
pollen. Scooping up death--
 
no distinction between friend
and foe, all obliterated
 
in service of unblemished
fields, poisoned bees
 
littering the ground.
The low hum of welcome
 
washed into air,
torn apart by a breeze.
 
Sent down streams
like the limbs of Orpheus;
 
the queen perched on her throne,
wondering who will come to feed her.
 
Regal head tilting patiently,
big eyes surveying the decay. Where
 
is her long train, her cloak
of swarming bodies,
 
tight as tapestry? Gone,
all gone. Her own body
 
meaningless without them.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

“Colony Collapse” has been published in a previous version in Hamilton Arts and Letters  and in Under the Gamma Camera ​ (Gaspereau, 2019).

Madeline Bassnett is the author of the poetry collection Under the Gamma Camera (Gaspereau 2019), and  two chapbooks, Pilgrimage and Elegies. Her poems have appeared in journals including long con magazine, Prairie Fire, Hamilton Arts and Letters, The New Quarterly, and in the anthology, In Fine Form, 2nd Edition: A Contemporary Look at Canadian Form Poetry. She is currently on the board of Poetry London and teaches in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Western University. She lives in London, Ontario.