Midnight Hives

The harvest moon is six hours late

and I can’t catch up. Houses, fences,

cars dive into the dark like wrecked ships.

I gain my bearings—shadows move

through the field, corrupt ghosts

whose dirty hands drag the grass--

and listen for the hum of the bees.

Weeks I refused to be led here,

Bound-less apprehension fueled excuses:

I fear the dark, the lumbering bears, the

abrupt silence of crickets like a pinprick,

blood rising to the surface of midnight.

I am told to close my eyes and walk; he strides

ahead, a drunk man bitten sober,

no stumbling over tree roots or rotting branches.

I map the distance to the outline of boxes,

greedy for the whirring I’d predicted and recognize

as soon as I am close enough: it is a life,

or death, an alien motor, a moon engine.

He demands I come closer, just smell them,

they won’t sting you, they know I am here.

He is leaning down, his ear to a box, talking

to me, to the queen, his prayer thickening

their universe, but I can’t hear him—

they are droning in my head

like an incantation heard centuries ago—

I am shedding the moonlight, drinking the shadows,

rooting, growing, branching yellow flower heads,

smelling of earthy orgies,

feral and alive like the hot breath of birth:

the goldenrod, the bees.

Lost Art

At three a.m. I stand in an uncertain shed

breathing thick, heavy heat. The drunk man

I drove here after the bar closed pulls frames

of honeycomb out of boxes, identifies the type—

clover, citrus, basswood deep as roots.

My fingers press into comb after he rakes off wax;

honey weeps like amber sweat, primordial ooze

of natural selection and methodical habits learned,

bad decisions licked from fingertips dirty with an afterthought

of midnights past where bare lightbulbs and turned down

eyes lit the best way home.

Buckets of sweetness stand in the way of the door

but he is talking about bees, his humming connection to a universe

so complete that any other perfection is a joke—people

are too easy to figure out. I am only a bystander, though useful,

as there are universes to be transferred like hives loaded onto pick-up trucks.

This universe is dripping like moonlight down tree branches,

slow and syrupy like drunk dancing on hardwood floors with weepy

knots, slick and silent as the arms of a lead with steel-toed boots.

Half dead bees stumble onto his fingers. I am alarmed by his violent flick,

the bees lit on their own power and how it will kill them. Everything is sticky

like closed mouths and ransacked desire. I walk back

into the darkness, dispose of my pollen, drink the deep gold

of this universe, one I can find

on my own.

When Not Hungry, Restless

The last slider of autumn

hums past lazier than usual

like crawling honey bees

picking their way through flowerless

lawns, prepared for their winter cluster.

We, we are no longer

bee-drunk on air. Pollen settles

into the creases of faces, fingers’

callouses fade. Last season’s uniform benched,

a tanner version of you ghosts about,

seeks a sliver of sun. You shield your eyes

with your glove and squint, I turn and turn

untethered while Mercury does laps.

Falling backwards, sleepless stones

shiver frequencies tuned to loss.

Don’t ask how stars communicate.

If I miss your slouched grin, your lazy lean

over the bar, your eyes latched globes

hiding a snowless winter, a blue deepened

by melting, but no longer want to unhook them,

can I still call it desire?

This longing will not sleep. Listen carefully

as you hold this match to the hive, I whir within

this winter, a million fastballs, perfect spinning planets.

Sustained by a golden drug, I’m ready

For the tilt of the earth to summon

the sun, for the first pitch

of spring to sing its way through the dark,

the first crocus tempting me

to eat whatever you offer.

Over Shots of Tequila You Ask What My Bee Poem Means and Why I Always Push You Off The Cliff In Your Dream

In warm October, the bees still crawl through lavender,

hover over goldenrod, staging a fall

masquerade, signaling the sober girl

who mourns the crushed universe,

the pollen of my tears feeding a new loss

on repeat—the green baked to brown,

milky sunlight transformed to honey,

the work of creatures searching the thistle

and clover for one last sip.

If I drink enough, I can explain the breakdown

of our evolution, how I was not meant to cry

into a morning cup, roll the stones

of my discontent all day to earn enough

to carry the heavy weight of breath.

If I put down this shot glass,

drag you to the mountain’s edge where

sky gives way to meadows still raving with color,

you will hear the electric hum of this world, the rot

and light of bold magic, the sting of knowing

and how we lost it. Do we have to fall

to remember how to live? Or can we

reach for roots, burrow into the bones

of soil to sleep dreamless, drunk

on the bees droning deep into their night.

We could remember who we are, the foggy-eyed,

violet winter would not seem so foreign

as the winged ancestors of birth

and death cycle us through another season,

hold us steady with their song.

Birth Song

Inside us black birds sing, beaks poking holes in the belly

of my hurt and yours and ours. Scars carried like jewels,

talons wrap around a world we want to save

while it drowns in animal blood. We saw this coming,

metal traps gleam like all things

coveted just before dark, like hooded blasphemy, like a woman’s

open thighs, shadows flooding a briny plague. So we push forward,

reach out of a warm womb towards a mother we could kill,

kill for, pray it will be different this time.

Just yesterday, I saw an old woman pull a black feather

from her mouth, words running like hooves in sand,

trying to heal a crying child with spells. The child peered

at the feather through the light of a shedding sun,

the child preened then swallowed the feather,

smiled at the winged silence

in the old woman’s eyes,

the weight of a new world filling her belly.

So The Story Goes

For Ron

When I told him I was a shapeshifter,

he was not surprised. He had known

women like me—mother, sisters, wives

with wolves’ teeth for blood, owl’s talons

for eyes. Most men don’t believe

what they have when they have us

so we ghost through their houses, leave webs

in their beds. We are not elegant,

whimsical; vapor trailing up mountainsides,

courtesans sighing through closed doorways.

We walk heavily, sip whiskey, hang laundry

over lattice, trace naked bodies

in sleep, wake with them crumpled

beside us, grizzled and rare. His dark stare

hung quietly over the bar. He brought small gifts,

asked for only conversation, my loud laugh,

held my shapes like a secret, his hands hardened

by iron-work folded on the counter,

wise from his ancestor’s lore that warned

this magic is real -- women like me disappear

the moment you build the pedestal. Foolish

in our youth, we wished to marry the stars

but in spite of the tale, didn’t miss the earth;

we return to pour scotch on the rocks,

guard paintings of the night sky—we are pathfinders,

stiletto-stompers, rain-keepers,—certain men

find us, palm open our wild, taste our skin

on their shadows, believe.

Vision

Somewhere between the Catskills and Buffalo

I am driving too fast. My infant son waits for me

to come home to rock him to sleep while my mother

dozes in a hospital bed, puffy and achy

from surgery. My world is a blur,

like my lenses are the wrong prescription, like I am flying,

eyes open, through a tornado. Why weren’t we born

with wings? Why didn’t some god borrow feathers

from hawks or seagulls, sew them

to our shoulders, give us perspective? I can’t see

past the last 24 hours of my life—the waiting room,

the phone in the corner and its sudden startle, shaking fingers

snatching it off the hook. Family members pace, joke

through crossword puzzles, try not to find

“lymph nodes” or “colon” in the coded words, deny

silent dangers that snake through our

lives. People in cars I fly past have mothers

calmly folding laundry right now, or strolling in a park,

reaching back to rub an aching shoulder, maybe stopping

to look around.

My Son Asks Me If Witches Are Cold-Blooded

I pull out my bones so he can throw them, read his history. I sweep swamps, woods for roots to make broth. I tame the bees who sting me, draw honey from the wounds. I pierce my lips with blackberry briars, press them to his forehead. I feed him from my bowl, warm his hand in mine.

Night Fishing

The improbability that fish

larger than dreams could live

in an ankle-deep stream

was what troubled us most.

Not that our children

could hold their breath,

scoop the monsters

into their arms, press them

to bursting chests, gills pulsing,

tails thrashing, suffocating

from joy or pain—we could only guess

what they have known –

and haul them to us, smiling

with inhaled anticipation—

a distant memory of survival

nets them, trembles

through us.

Things I Tell My Children

Always carry a dark stone, a mute bluebird, a sharp arrow, homing devices nobody questions. Trust animals -- human directions are deceitful, their bones lie (love them anyway). Share your poems whenever possible, only sacrifice survives, map the consequences with metaphor; the poem is always truth. A dewdrop cannot be saved, let it dry so the stars have a trail to follow, feed the deer fermented apples, they may stumble, steady; the skies’ reflection in their eyes is a prayer—say it. Look a loved one dead in the face, blame your defiance on your mother, her damp hands feeding earth soft men, when briars grab your legs as you run, bloody scratches become new words (the stinging eventually subsides): write them. Listen to the fish dreaming at lake’s bottom, swallow the weight of the stone in your pocket, be silent, the birch branches all sway in the right direction, look up. Be grateful—your arrow points to verses the startled bluebird sings once you give her voice.