Michael Lavers

CODA

From the garden rose the sound of bees
that lurched and wobbled through the peonies.
We ate eggs, French toast, drank milk that warmed
in minutes in the sun while fat drones swarmed
and looped like drunkards in the purple field.
On the porch we heard their bodies yield
to wills their fuzzy minds don’t understand.
They smelled the stains of syrup on your hand
and one, in gold-encrusted drunken strut,
smeared pollen from its mandibles and gut
along your wrist. That morning you had tied
your hair, and as you rose and ran inside,
it gently bounced, and loosed, and then unfurled.
If the next is better, I’ll still miss this world.

–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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