No more honey bees
no bumblebees
no butterflies
no flies or moth
no buzz of wilderness
to pollinate
and afterward
silent orchard workers climb
the trees to gently brush
the petals of the apple bloom,
so you can later taste
forbidden fruit
with pesticides.
Still Life with Apples, a Pear and a Ceramic Portrait Jug by Paul Gauguin
A quadrille for using the word wild for dVerse, also linking to earthweal where Sherry wants us to write about the animals of climate change. As many of you knows bees and many insects are dying. There are many reasons, pesticides diseases, and climate change. Somehow I think this goes back to the forbidden fruits of Eden.
—
January 27, 2020
Björn Rudbergs writings 
What a lovely image, Björn, but not a lovely thought. It would be tragic if we lost insects. The second stanza is scary.
This is, indeed, tragic. The misperception of the symbiosis of bees and flowers, and this idea that we’ll just fumble on without them. You’ve put it so simply and starkly. Let the world heed the poets!
Totally agree, Victoria
I truly pray that we are gone long before the pollinators are. Earth will live on and heal if we go. Without them the world is doomed.
Oh wow! I knew it was coming from the first stanza, no more bumble bees etc….but you drive the knife in at the end. Subtlety be damned.
I like the ending with “pesticides”.
Another garden of Eden? Maybe. And those apples might be inedible. Without our relationship with animals, we will surely be gone too.
Bjorn, I was born in apple orchard country, now sprouting condominiums instead of fruit. So this poem really speaks to me. Apples used to taste so good right off the tree. The pesticides have really messed everything up. As a child, I used to swing on the gate while big trucks went up and down our streets spraying DDT to kill the mosquitoes. It is a wonder I hve lived this long. LOL. Lovely to see you at Earthlink, though this week I think I have depressed everyone.
Oh, Bjorn, it truly is a horrible situation. So distressing about all of the pollinators. I cannot that humans will be able to exist without them. I can just picture those silent orchard workers silently trying to replace what bees or butterflies had done. I wonder if that is really possible. It would be a momentous task.
Bjorn, you certainly have a way of getting your message across. Those pesticides will be the death of us.
My brother raised bees until they were dying off faster than he could buy them. So sad. I hear they are starting to come back though. Hope it is not a false rumor.
It’s sobering to think how much the world depends on those tiny creatures that we take for granted.
darn! the last line gave me goosebumps. what world we turned this earth, humans.
Behind all the reasons for the vanishing of bees and insects — pesticides, diseases, and climate change — there is always a human hand. That’s why they call it the Anthropocene, and those bees of the visible — us humans — are steadily at work here, forcing the work with fraudulent hands & producing forbidden fruit. Well done.
So true , earlier the apple was laden with sins now with pesticides……..ultimately death …..
Very much succinct. These two words “Still life” portend the future, as it were.
The facts are sobering.
Ha! a little pesticide in our roundup-ready cereal too. Yum.
i love that you wrote this.
Oh, the sadness of it all. This ending packs a punch.
“so you can later taste
forbidden fruit
with pesticides.”
Lovely.
All of those critter names just sound so lovely and poetic together, and I love them all, so this makes me sad.
Yes, it’s getting to look more and more like Soylent Green, Bjorn. There seems to be no limit on the number of species we think we can live without. An elegant little quadrille that says volumes.
Hmmmm, unlike you not to reciprocate on my blog, Bjorn. I was the 8th one to comment yours. Not sure why no visit this time. Sighn.
I do not know how that happened …. heading over immediately.
And it’s nothing we can wash off our fruit, no matter how we scrub. My brother-in-law is trying to be a beekeeper but he lost both hives last year.
Truth.