The bees settle on the lawn, four, five swarms,
and Mandy down the road stops watering the side of her house to call,
says ‘I wouldn’t come outside’. Man and dog are allergic.
Stuck in the thin fibro, no-AC, while the day heats
and the light off the ocean is glass sharp.
A particular kind of inside exile to daytime TV
and furtive smoke breaks in the toilet, while the lawn crawls
like the shoulder of a tiger stretching.
You can’t drink the bore water and what’s fresh is a car ride away.
The filtered water lessens and then the soft drinks give too.
The kettle grows scales from boiling and reboiling
with an insistent hiss. All night there’s a hum
like some great engine starting up slowly.
The tiny twitch of black legs on the glass
like screws tightening. Bees build, it’s known,
maybe the outside of the house is now one great hexagon
that won’t be seen unless they, and you, can leave.