The Ballad Of The Bachelor Beekeeper Poem by Hannington Mumo

The Mutaitho hill zigzags its way to the borderlines of the sky
And to the opposite poses the historic Muilu hill once a shrine;
Now there between slithers the Kimongo River where huge rocks lie;
It’s on the banks of this river where the bachelor beekeeper lives.

His bald head is not worthy a ballad
Nor are his words so many to deserve a hoot,
It is his bee keeping zeal that stirs your blood;
An enterprise he’s run for years thirty and three.

And don’t think of the sophisticated box hives
Where you ferry the insects and lock them in,
He fells a log and hollows it all with his knives,
Till a home for bees he fashions there.

Not the low-lying things folks call hives,
Well-smoothed wooden objects lodged up the twigs
Of the most slippery trees with leaves like chives
Where no cunning badger would dare venture.


And he does his seasonal harvesting in the dead of the night,
While softer men curl to listen to the snores of their wives;
A night traveler will see his hairless head reflect the moonlight
And think they’ve spotted the nightly escapades of a ghost.

Now why he remains a bachelor at sixty and three
Is a secret only known to his bee-keeping mind,
Perhaps nothing charms him more than a flourishing hive,
Perchance no girl would enchant more than the honeyed bee.