Into The Circle Of Life - 24" x 48", Multimedia - Acrylic on Poplar, Wasp Nest, Honey Comb, Rose Petals & Red Pine Bark, $3,700

It is a gift that wraps and weaves

This hierarchy of life

Meshing intricately the spit

From what is chewed

It never stops

It’s giving into a dual future and past

Becoming the continuum of a circle

Cycling around, an eternity of keeping

Feeding and leaving a trail

Of what was taken stolen lost

And the give back feeds forward into the servitude of others

It is the contrasts of its duality that feels like

A warmth inside her cold

Like the love one finds from a stone after the sun sets hot upon it then leaves

That she can be the retainer of something

Cold as a shadow or

Hold hot his heat as he shines down so far away

To believe in one’s own heart that the sweetness on the tongue

Could be the contribution of so many

That they would die protecting her

She is connected by the drones who serve her

The soldiers who die protecting her

And the ones that bring pollen to her

Even after they all fall down

Spent on Earth’s floor

Petals to knees, flowers taken in her name

The perpetuation that meshes homes stolen

Into another’s hive

Drones feeding the Queen and the Black stripe That wings back treasures

Found in flowers on legs to her

Mating and buzzing and buzzing and buzzing;

“...I am here again as your offering, I’ll make the sweetness on your tongue, I’ll be the sting in your heart, I am broken in your love”

And they wear a loyalty to her

Linked to the work of what was done

Given and taken she is the one who keeps the work and homes of everyone

“...you have always been mine, and I yours. You told me in my mind, in my dreams that time was the work of the bee, for I am your Queen

And I am keeping the drippings of sweetness that I have stolen from every land

From every native people

From the Americas to the Middle East Asia and Africa”

The Queen has reigned this over and

Onto all Native peoples

She is the Queen of all the bee hives

In her name they were taken

In her name they were sodomized

In her name children were born to children

Then quickly died

By priests and nuns

In her name slaves were made and died

And land was taken

In her name Grand Chiefs, women children, men

Were made to be in her image

Like drones

In her name children were stolen and returned

Walking wounded or buried

In her name she took away and occupied it

While grafting herself into the circle of lives

Making for herself the honey

Stealing for herself the flowers

Breaking inside all indigenous spirits

In her name they became heathen and savage

Dividing their families, droning their tongues

And this all done in the passage of mime that Takes time to cut ribbons and plant plants

That presides over luncheons

And determines which mined jeweled crowns

Will mark her seasons

In her name

The treaties were broken

And in her name cancers were spoken

In her name oils spilled into turquoise

The great mother has stolen and poisoned

Our place into the circle of life.

LauraLee K. Harris