A Poem by John W. Sexton

World Without Bees Amen

On the sills the bees are dying.  Bumbles
fuzzing in their humming.  Their furred knitwear
losing lustre; their breathing visible,
their wings crisply stopped.  The dustpan will share
them to the hedged garden.  I fling them out
against the wind, and they fly one last time,
but just the flight of falling.  Who will shout
to stop the dying?
                                   There just isn't time,
so watch them die in their furry troubles,
fuzzed in their humming, the dying bumbles.

John W. Sexton lives in the Republic of Ireland and is the author of five poetry collections, the most recent being The Offspring of the Moon, (Salmon Poetry, 2013).  He also created and wrote The Ivory Tower for RTI radio, which ran to over one hundred half-hour episodes from 1999 to 2002.  Two novels based on the characters from this series have been published by the O'Brien Press:  The Johnny Coffin Diaries and Johnny Coffin School-Dazed, which have been translated into both Italian and Serbian.  He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his poem "The Green Owl" won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007.  Also in 2007 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.