New Poem by Charles Dodd White

Old Bee Colony in a Bro­ken Down Homeplace

You and I, we have come to the relic

Blight­ed with hob­nails, slammed tight to plumb

Where the secret city of insects once

Thrived. The comb, brit­tle as grave­ly sunk bones

Is a sur­prise, a tear in time to cheat

The use of what we should car­ry away.

I set the pinch­bar and you laid on strong.

Three ham­mer­strokes and the clap­board popped free,

So we could build some­thing out in the woods,

Sling up tim­ber for the deer camp which was

Real­ly more of a beer camp, truth be told.

But then we found the colony, some small

Geom­e­try of dirt that exceeds what 

We could do with true lev­els and scaffolds. 

See how the bees ripped through these ash chambers

Pocked like the rain torn stat­ues of dumb gods,

And hear a des­o­late communion

Of silence when they left a griev­ing song

For us to find in the Octo­ber dust.

Charles Dodd White was born in Atlanta, Geor­gia in 1976. He cur­rent­ly lives in Asheville, North Car­oli­na where he teach­es writ­ing and Lit­er­a­ture at South Col­lege. He has been a Marine, a fly­fish­ing guide and a news­pa­per jour­nal­ist. His fic­tion has appeared or is forth­com­ing in The Col­lag­ist, Night Train, North Car­oli­na Lit­er­ary Review, PANK, Word Riot and sev­er­al oth­ers. His nov­el Lambs of Men, a sto­ry of a Marine Corps vet­er­an of World War I in West­ern North Car­oli­na, was pub­lished by Casper­ian Books in Fall 2010. He is cur­rent­ly at work on anoth­er nov­el and a col­lec­tion of short stories.