Up Against It
Up Against It
by E. Grennan
It’s the way they cannot understand the window
they buzz and buzz against, the bees that take
a wrong turn at my door and end up thus
in a drift at first of almost idle curiosity,
cruising the room until they find themselves
smack up against it and they cannot fathom how
the air has hardened and the world they know
with their eyes keeps out of reach as, stuck there
with all they want just in front of them, they must
fling their bodies against the one unalterable law
of things—this fact of glass—and can only go on
making the sound that tethers their electric
fury to what’s impossible, feeling the sting in it.
This happens perennially in my house where the intruder ends up against my office window. So strange, and yet familiar to our behavior. We can see where we want to go but can’t get there for some “unalterable law;” in the bee’s case, “this fact of glass.” Fine elaboration on such frustration: “they cannot fathom how the air has hardened;” “stuck there with all they want just in front of them;” buzzing, “feeling the sting” “that tethers their electric fury to what’s impossible.” Just as we do, not perceiving how we got into whatever box it may be and therefore not able to get out, waxing furious. Reminds me of the last stanza in the recent posting “Three Worlds.”