To A Mentor Poem by Glen Martin Fitch

First note the scholar bee
who finds relief
when she performs
the formal dance.
She must ignore the hue and scent
of every leaf.
Her quest is just to find
the golden dust.
Then there's the critic bee
who builds the hive.
The coffer's lucre
never her attracts.
She only takes enough
to keep alive,
for her clan works
the wondrous scheme of wax.
Within our academic hive
I seem a lazy drone
who never will succeed.
I roam and scan.
I taste and hum and dream.
But honeyed psalms
can fill each empty cell.
Dear Queen of Bees,
feed me your sacred mead
and with each sip
the songs in me shall swell.