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Bees land on purple flowers

Ross White, teaching assistant professor and director of the creative writing program in the department of English and comparative literature, shares a new poem from his debut poetry collection, Charm Offensive.

WONDERS NEVER CEASE

All day bees built honeycombs

around the sleepers,

weaving wax

into hexagons, laying in honey,

sealing the walls.

Work which might

have taken months,

all in an afternoon.

The sleepers dreamed of corn cobs

and race cars,

of Egyptian burial rituals.

The dreams were fitful, but the sleepers

hardly shifted

as thin wings sputtered

around them, larva maturing in minutes.

The sleepers slept peacefully,

their arms crossed

as though

they had been laid,

lifeless,

in a pharoah’s tomb.

Each of us has only minutes left to live.

Ruin lies in rushing through.

By Ross White

“Wonders Never Cease” is from Charm Offensive, the debut poetry collection by Ross White, teaching assistant professor and director of the creative writing program in the department of English and comparative literature. White is winner of the Sexton Poetry Prize and the director of Bull City Press, an independent publisher of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction.

Read more books by College faculty and alumni.


Published in the Spring 2024 issue | Chapter & Verse

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