Picture of the Hive
Fingers to keyboard, cyber-minded
when the photo hits your inbox—
Hexagons burnt into wood: a pattern
innately inside the bee, graffiti-ed
by human hands. A welcome
for whom? A home of sorts.
Display of bees; built production
of honey and love. A patch of bodies
leaks up from the lower opening
disobedient; gravity uncontained
in roil of wings and legs and thoraxes.
Vision of keeping. How insect grows
beyond singularity. Shared action
creates: a bee on a bee on a bee
becomes swarm: how one must settle
into colony, endure abdominal glands
producing wax, barbs on the stinger,
following and giving. Does the bee
ever feel disconnected? A moment of life
pixelated across the screen. You, now,
deep in apiology, witness yourself
on haunches inside the bee yard,
pollen and honey in your hair, swept
in the zzzzzzzzz dwelling inside you.
Alone at the Lake
How often your mind mirrors the lake,
surface frozen, mid ripple.
What was once water
rips from sand at the seam—
to be unstitched; bits of you
scatter & resemble seeds
dried & un-sowable. Beyond shore
depths teem. What keeps
a body held in? Sewn breath
of January wrinkles thoughts
here—where buoys strew
float-less & sad—a crime
scene in wait of discovery.
You want to believe
a shore may stretch forever,
guarded circumference of self
looping in & around a body
immobilized; the amygdala
disobeys dormancy, streams
memory without consent.
& you say “undone” & “regret”
as part of language the cerebral cortex
muddled out of nothing
to understand, and yet—an echo
of spring unravels clues
piling in the dense clouds. & mystery
swims in each opening
of the aortic valve. To dissipate
upon notice, or not be noticed at all—
precipitation the sky kept; air
feeding lungs; gray matter
in action: words
forming within a tendril of brain
& all the world synapses; all the world
fluid & permeable—you are
hardly able. Hardly.
In Hush
Sun’s lug: a blazon crown in horizon. All shadows
seeded in shadow, linger—what gape
before
recede, before light reclaims. Space dances in
the in-between, diachronic of self –
luminance. Ineffable
a moment—we have been brought here: soul-
heavy, naked gait, eyes feasting. You witness:
tree trunks burnt into morning. You shift
your eyes away; the burnt follows
the grey of landscape emerges through the onyx-
brushed blue; & we enter
something elemental, something
coaxing; the dream left us here to puzzle deeper
into the dream. Hushed as a baby, we fell
in love with movement of lips, rigidity of teeth,
song forming in the back of our throat. Larynx
cajoles our hymns out, out—
release. We find
our brain in hum; our brain translucent in early
fires of day, absorption ready. You find yourself
in stop; the crosswalk brisk; your hair sweeping
cheeks and forehead in gentle waves.
Intake.
Intake this color rich, cold comfort—
rising. &
the geese, in long forget, go about their honking;
the fire station opens its eyelids one at a time
in a slow, backwards wink— motion by motion,
the city wakes as part of you & you
gazer, your mouth puckered in hush.
Photo Credits: carianoff / Foter.com / CC BY-SA Irudayam / Foter.com / CC BY-ND