Michael Collier

Michael Collier
Michael Collier's sixth collection of poems, An Individual History, will be published in spring 2012 with W.W. Norton. He teaches in the creative writing program and the University of Maryland and is director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

Robbers

Bee-lines, silk-thread tracers not
tangling, not weaving air
but straight to the sweet scent
carried wind-blown up the valley.

Time's streak, time's lapsed contrails,
eye-level or higher, more and more
gathering, sun-warmed, sun-driven,
hoards and hoarded, divvied, scrumming—

one and one and one—by instinct
ravenous, thousands and thousands,
bobbing, probing the stacked white
hives, fragrant, glued, defended

by infidel or Saracen whose fierce
difference are queens of their making.