I walked outside to confide the details of my day with the carpenter bees circling my old pine cabin like a big pollen pie.

I talk– about screens and confinement and the want to run my animal body ragged

Foraging and digging and splitting while sitting and listening and adjusting– eyes to screen, headphones to ears, back to chair– things a bee does not know of.

They hummed along in response, showing off their diligent daily task.

I feel this life, I continued, constantly gnawing and needing and sucking

on flesh and sticks and pine,

hungry for the air beyond the smoke clouds,

the things it hasn’t yet devoured.

Consumed by this feeding animal all around– picking and licking and wanting– never satisfied.

Oh honey. the bee replied in her hummy whisper. That warm bowl you sink into is a fickle, fleeting thing, like these here burrows in this old pine.

You find ’em for a moment, studying their intricate grooves, dancing along the edges, content if only for a moment until you’re called further on. That hunger don’t eat on you no more than you’re animal feasting on it too.

We stopped to watch a bunny bounce effortlessly in and out of the hedge. hesitating for a moment before biting down on thick tufts of grass.

I removed my socks and stepped down from the wooden porch into the rough, mid-day soil, looking at stacks of locust from winter and rows of tomatoes and corn planted in spring.

My feet rustled through the grass, carrying my heavy human self, full from a renewed recognition of racism alive and well,

hunger in the face of abundance,

the intergenerational shadow dance of hatred,

and the clashing of swords from it all.

I attempted to catch that fleeting feeling as the sun warmed my shoulders and the squirrels hurried past. So slow and steady with it all, soft in my heavy bones.

I glanced over as the bee buzzed by in her hurried hummy way and felt appropriately placed as my animal self for a moment.