Eulogy for those coming out of isolation

April 28, 2020

Eulogy for Those Coming Out of Isolation

The carpenter bee has a hard, black back

You can hear it when it kamikaze flies into the side of the house

Because it can

It has a hard shell and a soft belly

It has the capability to hover 

It’s craft being to get right down to your level and stay there

Looking you in the eye as you wonder,

Do they sting?

“I’ve been told they can sting”

Is what they said after they killed my hover bee friend

Because they feared it could sting, or

Because they knew they had the power to kill off the disturbance in their soul

Objectified in this being perceived to be lesser (can YOU fly?!)

Who knows, the males don’t have a stinger

Was my friend who I just greeted when I came outside in our shared territory

Were they a male?

Maybe he didn’t even have the capacity to sting but I didn’t fear her because I connected

I felt them a part of the family, like siblings

I learned about them and how they burrow in isolation during the winter but make sure 

each isolated pod gets the food and resources they need

They do the hard labor of burrowing the wood so that they can leave this trail to a necessary 

resting place for the next bee to come along

I cried as he lay lifeless on the ground

He was my teacher and my friend, the black man and the black woman in the hospital bed,
on the concrete earth, under the earth

Harriet Tubman leaving supplies and shelter for the next…

So we don’t all have to kamikaze our way through this life but might have a place to land,
a path that’s tread, the food and resources that we need

A place for my grief springs up as my bee family has come out of isolation for the spring and summer

I’m sure they have much to teach us about how to be once we come out of necessary isolation,
and while still in it, how to eulogize our changed environment, way of living

There’s a way for us to stop waiting to face imposed outcomes

Like the bee, I hover, I’m still moving, breathing, in place, in a cyclical air of energy that creates
resonant vibration

I feel that vibrational energy transferring to my voice, building up to a shout

WE MUST NOT LET FEAR OF ANOTHER CAUSING US DISCOMFORT, DISPLACEMENT
OR HARM BE OUR EXCUSE TO CAUSE HARM. 
WE HAVE TO RECOGNIZE THAT WE’RE SUPPOSED TO TAKE CARE OF ONE ANOTHER,
NOT JUST ENSURE OUR OWN COMFORT OR INAUTHENTIC SENSE OF POWER.

Comfort and power at the expense of mutuality have passed on March 10, 2020 at 1:29pm. 
They leave behind many beloved estranged family members: mutual aid, interdependence,
familial comfort, nature connection, spiritual shifts, internal integration...and so many more. 
You can experience the gifts by making contact.

Saying their names…

Ahmaud Arbery

Breonna Taylor.

...Visioning the eradication of suffering and the liberation of all people, especially Black people