(with thanks and apologies to Joyce Kilmer)
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a bee
Buzzing free from flower to flower
Drinking nectar by the hour
Pollen sticking stomach and legs
A bee works hard and never begs
Nectar is mixed with precious wax
Creates honeycomb stack by stack
Honey sweetens, making smiles
Spreads joy for miles and miles
Bees are lovely as you can see
Let us preserve them you and me
The flower bends when the honeybeelands,
stem bowing low as he gathers sustenance.
Filled, the bee takes flight and the flower
stands straight up again.
I bend and your needs are met
and for the longest time, I still
stood regal and tall like the flower.
Time takes its toll.
I no longer return to my tall, straight self.
bone to heartwood
and hurt her body
held: dread, heat,
her skin a door
to open
mercy
* Erasure from Sally Rosen Kindred’s poem “I Tell What Kind of Girl” from her new collection, Where the Wolf
You don’t mind, do you?
I must get a notebook
down here. I keep losing track
of the endless index cards
I find in the mornings, struggling
to decipher black ink scrawled
to remember what I may forget.
I want to write a poem
about June and how I remember,
June 10, the date I married first spouse
and how you remember July 7, the date
you divorced yours and I just shushed
you in my haste to jot these words
that deserve more than
these cramped index cards.
At least I got my poem for tomorrow.
It is a fragrance
That lifts off the heart
That mysterious flower
It feels soft
Like an unending
Openness willing
To accept everything
Just as it is
Without limit
Thy love giveth me an ache of head–
a pain in the arse–
a wish ye were dead
Thy love be like unto thorns,
not a rose–
and drink be not enough my
thoughts of thee to close
Thy love upon a time–
’twas all mine eyes could see–
now thinketh I only of how may I flee
Thy love cuts deeper than long sharp knife–
had only I known this,
before I made ye mine wife
He’s lived in our neighborhoood
for 60 years. Now
he sits in his wheelchair most afternoons.
He remembers building our kitchen.
Whispers in the leaves
words spring from the grass
rabbit bolts across my path
verse floats to the clouds
and dissolves beyond my grasp
