Beeline // Second Upbringing
Must be the thin film
of chicken fibers clung to my tips
or its butter skin scent the bee descends
towards with slack limbs
and stone silk wings. Crawl in
the gap between heart and life
line, curling V, the river bed
in my hand where what is moving
locates what already is—its little black head
lifting flesh from flesh
torso quivering like a sheen of ginger pollen
fluffed from the flower’s throat-womb, slid between
the buff hairs of bee
soft powder of a dream
carried through the dark
back door of a hive
swarm stilled to spiral in
and down home
cellular, plumping
with gold when at August’s first
full moon night you globe
their honey like the sun
behind your nacreous bed of nails
growing crescents in their breath and berry sky
close your eyes
taste your dreaming
body and the manifold petals, their spectral flesh
along your tongue, let the hidden ducts secrete
their sweet clear sap and meet Earth’s inner
rainbow: bulbs birthed with a color
in mind or upon blooming
make it up on the fly: what you won’t predict
unfurling beneath August’s last
blue moon:
recall the swirling drone, then three
sprawling their high hum over pressed wheat, suddenly
the Many weaving a tight mirage above
their Sacred Hole
where the Earth could not just
say what you seek
honey is already
here in
my nectar body
home is no thing
to own but tracing
the Eight, swirl its poles and the cross between:
every binary is a separating same
a bend, a push, wing sprout
from bone
find now your hand in the dance, in
the day moon dream
deep in barbed bramble coaxing blackberries
from the diamond grid gate where they cling
in embryonic green with drupelets wound tight
by your baby’s starfish grip
claiming, “take!” but too young to pick claims instead, “kiss!”
between you two the hive
locates your eyes
pale orb suspended
from a bare and quiet bush
as if floating, my heart within
its curling rib—borrow
my body and teach me
your beat, as Ocean bulging to fold, even
mirroring the Moon, from every dark
and quiet corner coming
forth in flickers
of silver glint, let me feel
for your waggle, find the angle
along the sun, let them see me
following you whose language winds
back and alongside the first flower’s synthesis
of Light for what might I
offer to the hive when I wake
in worship of your patterned
flight, with a few friends retrieved for the drum
stick meat; honest to goodness please,
have all
this body
I bring
if I may serve
with you
here
in
dance.