The Bees Poem by Haruna Garba

Oars in water, oars in the air
Countless, they arrived
The queen, the workers
And the soldiers swarmed
All around the king's aura

Countless they came
When morn, still an infant was

So when the ears had caught on the drone
And the eyes, the echelon
The gone bodies did cower
Baulked, dispelled of sunbath

The bees cave-lodged
Making crafty combs
In the dark basement
Of the occupied lodge
They took from the rain flowers
The feed of their rain breeds
Took from the harmattan flowers
The feed of their winter breeds
Ours, the pollination of the bloom
And nothing can be better than good faith
Let them drain the syrupy lakes
Hanging on the pendulum of locust bean trees
And sure let them do have
The feed of their summer breeds

Only at the summit of the harvest
With coldly flaming fire
Our tapers shoved in their oars too
Careless of supper growing cold
Careless of all forthcoming stings
With coldly flaming fire
Our knights-like adventurers
At last maneuvered them
And behold
Curacao in furrows smiled
Ointment that bartered well
For the injury incurred during the war

With our side winning the war
They got tamed, rather entrenched
And now only stray bees
Come to lick synthetic nectar
All by our very selves