There Will Be Change

The present moment is a wonderful moment. That’s the mantra that stuck in my head while reading Dead Bees Still Sting, Susan Cormier’s meditation on semi-agricultural life on a small farm. The book is a first for the spoken-word artist and filmmaker, and an outgrowth of her essay “Advice to a New Beekeeper,” which won the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize. Her latest work still has plenty of insights for budding apiarists as well as for anyone who lusts after the peace of nature. But this is not the atmosphere Cormier evokes. Living on an acreage with domesticated and wild animals takes presence of mind precisely because the present has a way of intruding on a person’s plans for the next hour, day, week — if not a whole season. When things get complex, as they often do when residing alongside a menagerie, it’s necessary to stay in the here and now.

Sometimes the realities of rural life mean abandoning intentions to do modern things with modern appliances when a...