Newsletter sign up

Be the first to know when new American Life in Poetry columns are live.

Column 661

Bees Were Better

Intro by Ted Kooser
11.19.2017

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Press has pub­lished a fine col­lec­tion of bee poems, If Bees are Few. Here’s one by one of my favorite poets, Nao­mi Shi­hab Nye, who lives in San Anto­nio. Her most recent book is Famous from Wings Press. 

Bees Were Better

In college, people were always breaking up.
We broke up in parking lots,
beside fountains.
Two people broke up
across a table from me
at the library.
I could not sit at that table again
though I did not know them.
I studied bees, who were able
to convey messages through dancing
and could find their ways
home to their hives
even if someone put up a blockade of sheets
and boards and wire.
Bees had radar in their wings and brains
that humans could barely understand.
I wrote a paper proclaiming
their brilliance and superiority
and revised it at a small café
featuring wooden hive-shaped honey-dippers
in silver honeypots
at every table.

Share this column

Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2008 by Naomi Shihab Nye, “Bees Were Better,” from If Bees Are Few: A Hive of Bee Poems, Ed., James P. Lenfestey, (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Naomi Shihab Nye and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.