Poem-A-Day: The Bee by James Dickey

February 2, 2014 The Bee by James Dickey   to the football coaches of Clemson College, 1942     One dot  Grainily shifting   we at roadside and  The smallest wings coming   along the rail fence out  Of the woods   one dot   of all that green. It now  Becomes flesh-crawling   then the quite still  Of stinging. I must live faster for my terrified  Small son   it is on him. Has come. Clings.    Old wingback, come  To life. If your knee action is high  Enough, the fat may fall in time   God damn  You, Dickey, dig   this is your last time to cut  And run   but you must give it everything you have  Left, for screaming near your screaming child is the sheer Murder of California traffic: some bee hangs driving    Your child  Blindly onto the highway. Get there however  Is still possible. Long live what I badly did  At Clemson   and all of my clumsiest drives  For the ball   all of my trying to turn  The corner downfield   and my spindling explosions  Through the five-hole over tackle. O backfield    Coach Shag Norton,  Tell me as you never yet have told me  To get the lead out scream   whatever will get  The slow-motion of middle age off me   I cannot  Make it this way   I will have to leave  My feet   they are gone   I have him where  He lives   and down we go singing with screams into    The dirt,  Son-screams of fathers   screams of dead coaches turning  To approval   and from between us the bee rises screaming  With flight   grainily shifting   riding the rail fence  Back into the woods   traffic blasting past us  Unchanged, nothing heard through the air-  conditioning glass   we lying at roadside full    Of the forearm prints  Of roadrocks   strawberries on our elbows as from  Scrimmage with the varsity   now we can get  Up   stand   turn away from the highway look straight  Into trees. See, there is nothing coming out   no  Smallest wing   no shift of a flight-grain   nothing  Nothing. Let us go in, son, and listen    For some tobacco-  mumbling voice in the branches   to say "That's  a little better,"   to our lives still hanging  By a hair. There is nothing to stop us   we can go  Deep    deeper   into elms, and listen to traffic die  Roaring, like a football crowd from which we have  Vanished. Dead coaches live in the air, son   live    In the ear  Like fathers, and urge   and urge. They want you better  Than you are. When needed, they rise and curse you   they  scream  When something must be saved. Here, under this tree,  We can sit down. You can sleep, and I can try  To give back what I have earned by keeping us  Alive, and safe from bees: the smile of some kind    Of savior--  Of touchdowns, of fumbles, battles,  Lives. Let me sit here with you, son  As on the bench, while the first string takes back  Over, far away and say with my silentest tongue, with the man- creating bruises of my arms   with a live leaf a quick  Dead hand on my shoulder, "Coach Norton, I am your boy."     From Poems 1957-1967 (Wesleyan University Press) by James Dickey. Copyright © 1967 by James Dickey. Used with permission of Wesleyan University Press. About This Poem  "The Bee" by James Dickey, first published in Harper's in 1966, was inspired by a true incident. Dickey said about the relationship between sports and poetry, "I want to get sports things into poetry...Sports are among the most beautiful things on this earth to me. They represent the nearest thing that we can get to some kind of bodily perfection, especially in those 'use' situations which are also aesthetically pleasing" ("Things Happen," Wisconsin Review, 1966).  Poetry by Dickey Poems, 1957-1967 (Wesleyan University Press, 1967)        Poem-A-Day Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-A-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Browse the Poem-A-Day Archive.     James Dickey was born ninety-one years ago today in Buckhead, Georgia. One of the great American poets of the twentieth century, Dickey received a National Book Award in 1966 and served as a consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, a position that later became poet laureate, from 1966 to 1968. Dickey died in 1997 in South Carolina.   Related Poems With Kit, Age 7, at the Beach by William Stafford  Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio by James Wright  Tackle Football by Dan Chiasson  __________________________ Love reading Poem-A-Day? Help support it today.     Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.

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