The bee balm tree
scratches the window as if to say,
Open, notice how alive I am,
the cupbearer of honey
humming with the sound of bees.
It is truly spring
with its first rapture of sweetness.
How I love their legs,
the honeybees in their labor,
legs fat with pollen,
the life force of our world.
Now it is carried by beings so infinitely creative,
shaping their chambers of wax
and honey in the attic of this house.
Some would not want them here,
some are afraid,
but I can compare one sweet thing to the other
and their lives of intelligent symmetry
are welcome.
I set up my table at this window
to smell the perfume of the tree,
to listen to the sound of creation.
Life is a scale
weighing thin and too light
to rid ourselves of anything
we do not know of this world
and these are creatures
with lives spent
creating one thing from another.
Who of us can figure the weight,
as the blossoms of squash open,
as corn forms its first beads,
wildflowers in the fields continue?
The world heart cries out for all the small.
But then,
who can blame the deer who eats the rose petals
and the apples still on the tree?
I want to do it too,
take in all the sweet life caught inside this world.
And upstairs the new amber.
After all, wasn’t there the promise of milk and honey,
the dowry for which we married this world?