BENJAMIN CUTLER
It Is Summer and the Neighbors Are Yelling
I have stepped outside to listen.
The couple above—one lover
from one country, the other another—
yell because they are here,
together, trying to live the same story.
The couple below yell because
one lover is drunk and the other doesn’t
drink enough. None of them know
how their voices, like neighborhood
sirens, have invited me to investigate—
a bystander at their wreckage, a quiet
voyeur with nothing to say.
*
In my own yard between us all, the hives
hum—two cedar boxes boiling with wild
colonies lured by the scent of their own past.
Their thrum is insistent, but the bees say
everything that matters with scent and dance:
the slow yellow arc of sun, a gray specter
of cloud, the flavors of fields and forests
beyond our road. Nothing concerns
these bees so much as the weather.
*
To the neighbors, still yelling: I will offer
this harvest of honey; a tongue can be silenced
with a drop of something sweet. Then, together,
we will listen: our breaths, our bees, our blue
horizon of nothing but so many whispers.
We wouldn’t make out a single word.
Benjamin Cutler is an award-winning poet and author of the full-length book of poetry, The Geese Who Might be Gods (Main Street Rag). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times and has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, EcoTheo Review, and Zone 3, among many others. In addition, Benjamin is a high-school English and creative writing teacher in the Southern Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina where he lives with his family and frequents the local rivers and trails.