The Beekeeper's Song

A few years ago when I visited Kazakhstan, our driver stood up to sing during the Sunday morning worship service. That afternoon I wrote about it.

I was thinking about him today when I went outside and heard the summer unfolding around me, saw the bees busy at our flowers.

the beekeeper’s voice

anatole, the man who drove us around the city,
(the man i couldn’t help but smell from the back of the van),
steps to the front of the church,
he is a beekeeper who lives up in the mountains of kazakhstan,
they tell me.

but then, before my eyes, he changes,
and he steps into the music where he was meant to dwell all along
and his voice fills the room and
makes your soul weep and faint and shudder in awe.
and the walls are not strong enough to hold in the voice of this beekeeper.
it spreads out across the land and takes over the world.
something holy and divine and everlasting dwells in that song. in that moment.

and then, suddenly, he is finished.
his big shoulders slump, and he quietly takes his seat.
and he becomes a reeking russian beekeeper once again.

but the rest of us are changed,
forever.