Setting out the Bees

So early the sky still shows
its winter stars, as if night
were another season, Orion
laying down his sword,
his dogs stiff-legged, weary.
The bees sleep in his arms
as he bundles thir slatted box
into the white ghosts
of the orchard. They won't stir
till dawn, pale sun pulling smoke
from frost. Against his chest
he rocks them, stepping blind
because of the box, dreaming
their pollen-drenched darkness,
their sweet work when they wake
in a strange and haunted country.

This poem goes towards the end of Ghost Maps. As with the last one I posted here, I'm not sure it stands alone well -- depends, perhaps, on the reader having meet those bees and apple blossoms and ghosts before, earlier in the book. I'm not sure if that's a strength or a weakness.

This is an early draft, but I hear music in it -- albeit quiet music -- and hope to be able to make something of it.