FLEE HAS SEEN A BEE

 

So, Flee, you may have seen a bee

but I don’t want you to see a rat.

 

It isn’t right, if it’s according to me,

that one should have to die like that.

 

The bee would sail across the ocean

as you lie back on the sunny green.

 

It would be cross-pollinating the garden,

extracting pollen for the mating queen…

 

once my copy of Neil Curry’s volume

started to smell of redolent perfume

 

so I built the Tower in my bedroom.

There were other books, a few of them

 

that also exhibited signs of natural

magic - for the smell was not a spillage in

 

my Gap Year bag, of aftershave, but actual

magic. I hope that when I am gone

 

someone reads the Tower as I built it,

tall and strong, lines left to right,

 

for it wasn’t aftershave, I never spilled it,

and you can take my word as true and quite.