Poems

Sample Poems

Spouse, Assembling Honey Frames
from Larvae of the Nearest Stars

I can keep, or fail to keep, the honeybees. Can bring them
water, fresh frames to hold the freight
of nectar, condensed and fanned to heavy honey.
Can bear them sugar, re-stack them after storm.
Can wade into the hum of the swarm to make
a desperate split, to keep the bees home. Can
mourn them when they weaken, when they die,
can bite back panic when they pierce the veil,
can take the hot hair-wire of the sting,
the sick shiver of the spreading venom.

But I can’t build. Power tools stalk me with death
in their red eyes, saws cant their paired teeth
up toward my foot, nails twist awry. It’s he,
who never wanted bees, who builds the hives,
the boxes with their corners clean and square,
the lightwood frames around the slender screens
of wax foundation, wax the bees will shape
into cells and fill with honey, a drop
for every ten thousand blooms stroked
and ravished, almost too sweet to bear.

He does what he always has: checks
the details, trues up the ends, fits the pins
and staples, drives the tacks, secures
the fragile frames made to store blackberry
blossom, ephemeral clover, the sticky syrup
of tulip poplar, sourwood’s buttery gold–
summer’s distillation of the marriage
of bee and nectary, performed anew each time
in endlessly repeated celebration
to hold the great, astounding weight
of all earth’s mortal sweetness. And they will.