Song
of the Radio Bees
by
Norbert Krapf
Back
then when Indy was a world away to the north
I
was a teenager in Kentuckiana washing and waxing
cars
and drinking beer with chums when the engines
sounded
on the radio like wild bees in the woods
swarming
nearer and nearer as a loud hum
turned
deafening and they roared closer.
When
I first sat in the grandstand decades
later
as a man circling into his seventies
I
heard a female voice say, “Ladies and gentlemen
start
your engines” and those bees roared again,
louder
than ever before. The low-slung cars
roared
off, big bumps raised on my arms
and
legs, and my lips smacked with the taste
of
honey and malt as this late song brewed.
Norbert
Krapf,
former Indiana poet laureate, has recently published his 12th poetry
collection, The Return of
Sunshine,
about his Colombian-German-American grandson. He is completing a
collection of poems for children and a prose memoir about his writing
life, Homecomings.