Soul's Colony

The bees curled dead beside the swimming pool.

Their wings clipped as a straight-stitch seam.

We tiptoed coldly from the water: of course

we hovered: made a colony

over bodies that crawled out of the droplets

of old pool water.

They sense fear, sweat lacquered

and neat on our lips. Tuck

our legs under us now, human land mines, susceptible to sharpness.

The bees curled dead, offered

their deaths to evening, accepted the slowing of day.

Slowness a blessing

on the body’s horizon.

We wish to never waste

the slow pull of lips.

We relish that small silence,

a hot star, fixed station

of revolution.

Yet the bees curl dead:

the dead silence nothing, only expand

our grief: never silence that. Dust along the china,

solid perfume lost of scent

pinpoints their missing—

The bees curled dead. We witnessed some crawl from the droplets,

they fooled

our grievances: in clumps they were

not bees

but stigmas, loose bulbs of pollen

and they were dancing

ghosting the air

with a last bit of sun.

This is the body: take it or not. Yes: the body falls: of course: we are meant for dents:

of course: we shiver in grief: of course: try to shake up some glimmer of light: turn ourselves loose on the wind

and we fear

of course we should—

prayer spits out of our lips and we send it skyward,

knock on the gray doors of our lives:

Grief finds company with the lives

we tender.