The Bear, and the Bees

There’s a poem by Mary Oliver ("Black Bear in the Orchard," see below) that opens with bees in their hive, totally in sync with their nature, happily doing what they do, creating and building and living; and it ends after the bear, who does what she does, in sync with her nature, has destroyed the hive and eaten the honey. The bear saunters away, content and satisfied. The poem is very powerful to me; it reminds me that we are always infringing upon each other, always seeking what we need and want (and it is so hard to figure out where “need” ends, and mere “want” begins); sometimes taking, and sometimes not taking… but so often the taking is a taking from someone else’s needs/wants. We all consume each other; in my more dour moments, I say that we all devour each other. We are all participants within a beautiful and terrible reciprocating and enmeshed cycle of taking and giving; dying and rising; creating and destroying. Sometimes it is called “Indra’s net.”

Once upon a time I shared this “Bear” poem with someone, and afterwards that person came to me and said, with a swagger in her voice and in her posture: “You know, I kinda like being a bear.” I was taken aback, and struggled a bit for a reply. I did not quite know what she meant. Later, I learned more about her (and about what she meant), when I saw her engage in a campaign of retaliation against another person who had apparently thwarted her ambitions in some way. She did indeed enjoy being a bear.

I think there is a key point somewhere in here. It is unavoidable, we are, indeed, engaged in a huge cycle of creation and destruction, inevitably hurting others along the way and often being grievously hurt, as well, even in the midst of joy. Yet we are born into human lives, with human minds and capacities for clarity and compassion. We can choose not to follow the path of the person I described just above, the one who “kinda likes being a bear.” That person (I believe) misses the point. We all play the role of “bear,” and the role of “bee.” The bear is not better than the bee, nor is the bee superior to the bear. The bear, in Oliver’s poem, is not reveling in her triumph, and does not despise the bee. And in human life, we can go further than that, as well (this I think is the key), and bring a certain wisdom, clarity and compassion, to all these interactions. No matter how painful.

Black Bear in the Orchard

It was a long winter.
But the bees were mostly awake
in their perfect house,
the workers whirling their wings
to make heat.
Then the bear woke,

too hungry not to remember
where the orchard was,
and the hives.
He was not a picklock.
He was a sledge that leaned
into their front wall and came out

the other side.
What could the bees do?
Their stings were as nothing.
They had planned everything
sufficiently
except for this: catastrophe.

They slumped under the bear’s breath.
They vanished into the curl of his tongue.
Some had just enough time
to think of how it might have been --
the cold easing,
the smell of leaves and flowers

floating in,
then the scouts going out,
then their coming back, and their dancing --
nothing different
but what happens in our own village.
What pity for the tiny souls

who are so hopeful, and work so diligently
until time brings, as it does, the slap and the claw.
Someday, of course, the bear himself
will become a bee, a honey bee, in the general mixing.
Nature, under her long green hair,
has such unbendable rules,

and a bee is not a powerful thing, even
when there are many,
as people, in a town or a village.
And what, moreover, is catastrophe?
Is it the sharp sword of God,
or just some other wild body, loving its life?

Not caring a whit, black bear
blinks his horrible, beautiful eyes,
slicks his teeth with his fat and happy tongue,
and saunters on.

Mary Oliver