bees in field trials

feel this petal –
your fingers will not know it beyond its downy silkiness
  nor do bees know the petal’s velvet is brought
by the immaculate meeting of internal and external rays of light
  and none of us knew this until research bees
were urged to forage in flat-surfaced mutant snapdragons
  rather than flowers with the domed epidermal cells
that give the petals their texture
  nor until the bees were led also to smooth epoxy snapdragons
without either colour or sweetness of scent
 
imagine –
all the world’s bees   with their tarsal claws   holding steady
  on light-given velvet   resting their hind legs   middle legs and wings
on delphinium petals and foxglove   hollyhocks
  yarrow and borage
sunflowers   milkweed and daisy
 
as for the birds   they like an untextured surface
 

Kay Syrad

in collection yellow noon-day, Cinnamon Press, 2025, ISBN 978-1-7886417-5-3

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mourning the wild glory          

turn your palm  to face you
 
and move your wrist
 
in slow circles  to the left
 
to know how tenderly
 
how imperceptibly the tendrils
 
wreathe  their light-host
 
 
 
and  when  you know this
 
vow   pledge
 
promise
 
 
 
unceasing  vigilance
 

                     Kay Syrad

                     Published in Invasive, Clare Whistler et al, Elephant Press, 2019

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Montana: 15th September

Third day in Small Town, Montana:
            one flat road through Ponderosa pines
            cabins, trailers, long-beard bikers
                                      hotel, motel, casino
            Make America Great Again Trump Fundraiser tonight
            two grizzly bears stuffed and mounted.
 
            Yesterday, at dusk, I disturbed
            a Great Blue Heron
                        drawing reluctantly from the creek
                        an awkward rise, legs unfolding,
                        its grace yet present in the sleek neck
                        and slow effort
            and I supposed, in wild nature, there could be no hurrying
                        no mistakes, no greed or unkindness
                        no taking for taking’s sake
                        no covenant-decreed sacrifice of others.
 
            Then this afternoon I bought a potato-masher
            at the Variety Store,
                        the shopkeeper’s mother
            was from Leeds, England, she said
                        and there are too many I-ranians
                        coming and taking our jobs
                        and the President
            is letting them live right next door
            bringing in their bombs
            and they hate us, right
            so they can go right back home
                        and leave the jobs for Americans
                        for us Seniors, just trying to pay our taxes.
 
And to my right and to my left
            men ate wild Mallard
each an entire duck blooding their plates.
 
            Now this evening, the creek below the pines
             is silver-pink
             shimmering toward the dark
and I think of the river running through us
             quietly asking its questions,
             low, beneath thought.
 

Kay Syrad

Second Prize, The Poetry School Diary Competition 2016

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Listening to moss

I take a blindfold, lie down and listen
to a half-globe of star-green star moss,
hear dense hairs ease up, and reflecting
leaf tips brace, catch narrow fronds sly
slowing the air, slow air lip a long leaf
and I just couldn’t remember humanness
even though or especially because she died
and I wasn’t there, nor she, all so very late
while the star-green star moss sips dew
in the breath-seed between air and rock
as if in death all were air and moss and fresh
floating love and death itself dissolved
until the powder-spores are lifted high,
full-free on breezy swirls and vortices.
 
 
 
for Judith, i.m.
 

Kay Syrad

in collection, Inland, 2019, Cinnamon Press,
ISBN 978-1-7886402-3-7

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