The Bee Hut Read Free Page A

take me?
    Or is it just an easy exile
    from blind faith and wishful talk?
    Death Comes as the End –
    Agatha, you threw out cosy
    when you served up dread.
    As surely as my trilobite
    with the right time, place
    and gritty clout,
    may I be preserved
    as insoluble enigma
    when a killer comet snuffs me out.

THE BEE HUT
    For Robert Colvin
    There is a dark place
    on my friend Robert’s farm
    that thrums
    with the nectar smell
    of danger.
    A swarm of bees
    has taken over
    a dozing old shed
    and no one
    has the means
    or guts
    to move them.
    I think of slaughtered
    Mycenean kings
    entombed in their brick
    hive
    glittering as they lie
    golder than honey
    in the old blood
    dark.
    Entranced
    my bare hand
    wants to plunge
    through a hole –
    now a buzzing lethal
    highway –
    in the shed wall.
    I love the bee hut
    on my friend Robert’s farm.
    I love the invisible mystery
    of its delicious industry.
    But do I love the lesson
    of my thralldom
    to the sweet dark things
    that can do me harm?

THE SNOW LINE
    I could smell
    the snow line
    but I just kept
    talking
    talking
    and climbing
    with this
    glimmering
    young man
    who was talking to me
    about death
    how
    a good dose of death
    if you truly drink it
    is a gift
    a gift
    a fresh cold
    slap
    a fresh dark
    creek
    you’ll never sleep-walk
    through your life
    again
    again
    I wonder now
    as I wondered then
    in the seeping ambrosia
    of pine trees
    if I was climbing
    effortlessly climbing
    if I was talking
    effortlessly talking
    with a god
    a god
    who never touched me
    or told me
    his name
    a god
    of sweet chill
    mountain air
    sense
    a comradely god
    of wing-booted
    presence.

SMELLING TIGERS
    Waiting.
    Starched hospital gown.
    Frozen present tense.
    Why am I smelling
    tigers?
    Muffled white noise.
    Bleached magazines.
    Why am I sniffing
    the steaming black scat
    of tigers?
    When I get my life back
    When I am clear of here
    I will go
    like a blind blessed arrow
    where I can wallow
    in the elixir
    of tiger.

NOT THE SAME
    When you climb
    out a black well
    you are not the same
    you come to
    in the blue air
    with a long sore scar
    circling your chest
    like the shoreline
    of a deep new sea
    your hands are webbed
    inviting you
    to trust yourself
    in water stranger
    and wilder
    than you’ve ever known
    your heart has a kick
    your eyes have
    a different bite
    you have emerged
    from some dark wonder
    you can’t explain
    you are not the same

THE SEA HARE
    Don’t bargain
    I tell myself
    as I scoop up the stranded sea hare
    gasping on the hot dry rock.
    Can it hurt me?
    I know nothing about sea hares.
    Do they too make desperate deals
    with their deathless invertebrate gods?
    Eerie to carry
    like an extraterrestrial
    yellow-green marooned jelly snail
    heavy in my towel.
    Can it hurt me?
    Just bless and release it
    and fight the urge to count
    your sticky Karma beads.
    Don’t bargain.
    Just grab the swishing tail
    of your nerve’s latest adventure
    and go with the inevitable tide.
    You know nothing
    about sea hares
    but you know the prayer
    of your own shivering gut.
    And it’s bargaining bargaining
    for the sea hare for the sea hare
    and the future of both
    our unknowable lives.

ON NORFOLK ISLAND WITH BRUCE
    This time last year I was on chemo
    And bald in a week
    Then another shock came out of the blue
    To tell me you’d died in your sleep.
    Too sick and groggy to go
    Stunned to your funeral
    Instead I raked the sky for your soul’s bird
    From the walls of my fumarole.
    Now I’m here and healthy
    Among the huge Norfolk pines
    That wander like friendly free-range cattle
    Through so many of your Manly lines.
    I’m carrying your last book
    Everywhere like a love affaire
    A potent amulet against all my ghosts
    That fret my gut with dead cold air.
    Suddenly a local kingfisher flashes
    Like a blue lightning crack
    Through the salt-scoured stones of this cemetery –
    I know it’s you, Bruce, electrically back.
    And I stand with my new