‘My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.’
Meditations In Time Of Civil War, W.B. Yeats
Each year, there would be two nests –
in the eaves at opposite corners
of our square house. We would hear them,
scratching in the gutters – and Danny,
the window cleaner, an ‘affable irregular’
of the black economy, at the door for his money,
would report on their progress
through the spring and the summer –
and remark on the bees floating in the rhododendron
by the porch. “They’re light with honey,” he would say,
“light with honey.”
This year, though there are still bees, for the first year in nearly
forty years there is an absence of starlings,
not a one. I remember long dead, street-wise, innocent Danny,
who liked his drink, and whose ladders were stolen
twice. I remember the teeming, imperious,
cacophonous roosts of starlings that choired
the big city nights, high in the dark.
I think of the well-lit streets – greedy,
internecine.