The Bees
Yes, the bee is driven to the blossom,
arrow loosed from the bow. Yet who taught
the plum bloom that creature’s secret name,
the doom the mouth is shaped to hymn? Who draws
the bow with deadly aim, the arrow
powerless, the target wooing the shaft,
the deer’s haunch bringing the wolf’s jowls home?
These words are not mine, but yours, passing
through dense mass, like moonlight through stained glass,
on their way back to you. They rest in your hands,
an opalescent hue on worn flagstones,
where tomorrow many feet may pass,
eyes lowered in the quailing stillness,
towards the altar covered in velvet, red
as hibiscus, or an open wound, or your lips.
(From the anthology If Bees Are Few, Uof MN Press, 2017)
arrow loosed from the bow. Yet who taught
the plum bloom that creature’s secret name,
the doom the mouth is shaped to hymn? Who draws
the bow with deadly aim, the arrow
powerless, the target wooing the shaft,
the deer’s haunch bringing the wolf’s jowls home?
These words are not mine, but yours, passing
through dense mass, like moonlight through stained glass,
on their way back to you. They rest in your hands,
an opalescent hue on worn flagstones,
where tomorrow many feet may pass,
eyes lowered in the quailing stillness,
towards the altar covered in velvet, red
as hibiscus, or an open wound, or your lips.
(From the anthology If Bees Are Few, Uof MN Press, 2017)
