It's Still Life

Old Wool and Bumblebees

There’s smoke in the air,
or maybe it’s my old Fair Isle
tweedy wool sweater.

Every odour and insect descends
on old wool. It always smells of something.

But this is smoke.

Just heard on the radio —
the last storm carried a veil of smoke
from North America’s wildfires,

hitched itself on a wave of darkness,
like lichen on a rock.

That song playing on the radio —
can’t recall its name, but it always reminds me
of Mum sitting at her sewing machine,

her thigh pressing against the knee pedal,
that steady clomp-clomp noise

as the needle bites into folds of fabric.
Annoying that I can’t recall that song’s name –
something about a bumblebee, I think.

Yeah, there’s definitely smoke in the air.

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The name of that song is “Flight of the Bumblebee” (Russian: Полёт шмеля), an orchestral interlude written by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) for his opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan. Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Imagery and poems ©Misky 2023.