i want to live

seeing bees i want to live
by Linda M. Crate

i’ve seen so many
honey bees and bumble bees
i know it is you visiting

you’re the bee keeper
who’s now found his bees
again,

i can’t believe you’re gone
sometimes
but dementia took your mother

she is a cruel
mistress
a demanding one;

i am sorry that you forgot
you remembered me
when you forgot others

it made me wonder if there’s
something in me the others didn’t have
or perhaps it is the dream you had of me—

i miss you and your jokes,
grandpa,
and i know i didn’t visit nearly enough

i am sorry;
seems work always got in the way
never got a chance to breathe—

capitalism isn’t a cure all,
but some would say the world we live in is good;
is it when people exist but never truly live?


Linda M. Crate’s poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has six published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press – June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon – January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), more than bone music (Clare Songbirds Publishing, March 2019), and one micro-chapbook Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018).

(For more, see Linda’s poem you will surrender your life from the December 16, 2019 Weekly. – Elephants Never)

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