Picture his beard, saltgrass
thick and mite
hearty, life’s buzz
finding home. A Baptist,
John, sips
locust, wild honey—
homilist euphoria
carries us
over sand dunes
and scrub. Stale
bramble chin like
Dad’s, who
wondered of the prophet:
is faith water
enough?
In the end, John
would answer
from a platter.
⸸
Dad warned of bees in the garden.
Chased snakes and demons,
but bees filled him with fear.
An apiarist now, my keeping demands
a veiled grace, a canter
aligned with the hive.
Demands all that and a well-made bonnet.
⸸
Babies run the broodcomb, pollen sits on top.
Open cells mumble and the afternoon sun
is never enough, all the buckets yet
unturned. Fast as you work, it’s a pinch,
a life, a teaspoon twelfth: honey’s
sum. And when they sting, it’s suicide.
Grace backing into death. Sweetness,
I would give my gold teeth to go that way,
to lose myself in the bloom of a fight.
⸸
And I return to honeyed when I speak of Dad’s hair.
Creased pages on his face, the fresh passages to learn.
He had an aunt, or great aunt, or some woman they knew well,
so they called her aunt anyway. Aunt Anyway,
she died. Lip stung by a bee. Oh, the sting of your own end
approaching,
of grace landing on your smile.
⸸
This Sunday, Dad wanders,
pitching through his sermon,
lost among liturgy, lost
longer than before.
His eyes settle on the pulse
of stained glass, on something
buzz-buzzing around the apse.
Camel-kissed beard line,
quickly pressed cassock,
he returns, at last, to honey
discovered in the carcass of a lion.
