My latest poems

Bees

The hive is filled by a swarm of bees

Making good their luxurious home.

The Queen is very well ensconced,

And the bees behave as they’ve always done.

 

But some having survived the move

Are concerned about their life.

They want to get all the workers together

To remove from their lives all their strife.

 

One of them has suggested a meeting

To discuss his swarm of ideas.

He wants to propose a democracy

To the multitude of his peers.

 

All the work is done by the women.

The ‘Workers’ by any other name

The males lie about all the day

Being intimate with their Queen.

 

They wanted to change all that

Make the males do more of the work.

But where is the drone’s incentive

To change their luxurious perk.

 

They just happened to be born into it,

But that does not make it right.

Maybe they should change their sex

And work themselves morning to night.

 

To work from dawn to dusk

Is not a change incentive.

But it might be when there is no food

And you are thrown out of your hive

 

And how could a worker girl

Ever fertilise her Queen?

Or laze about in the hive all day,

And to the flowers never to have been

 

We must have a meeting

And sort all this out without harm.

Either should be able do what they want

Take any place in their swarm.

 

So who can decide the changes?

Should a plan on, what, when and how,

Be agreed by a vote of the hive

To decide how it all goes from now.

 

Is this what Xi is trying to prevent?

Is this the way that things should be done?

Is this our chance of a new life

Or are we voting ourselves into dung?