Tuesday Poem: From The Water Series

 

Drawing By Sally Rendel

Old Woman’s Aria

What a boon, what a boon, what a boon!

to live in an empty honey crock tucked into

the long brown bones of a hedge.

O bee hieroglyphics!

O nectar and reverie!

O to row out in half a walnut,

to meet this drowned world,

with its blessings of barter and trade,

its mud that spits out stones for ballast

and jars, those glass beatitudes,

that rise up singing out of the muck,

jars, clear and intact, no matter to me

how small they be, or what they held once,

jars I catch the rain in, the best ones

begging to be filled with potables,

to be sealed with caps I make

out of crayons and candle scraps.

O to be washed sweet again by the rain,

to savor the taste of a memory, though

the poor bees, themselves, are gone!