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.