The Security Of Fat Buds Opening
Copyright ©2012 Mary Susannah Robbins
Smashwords Edition
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• • •
Sweet as a thundercloud,
Still as the stamens of glowing flowers,
Un reachable as high, ripe apples,
You absorb yourself with honey-thoughts.
Your words sing out like bees
In octagonal combs, revving before their long
Directed journey.
I am an octagonal cell
Your speech inhabits. As you move
My intricate stability creates
A context for your sound.
You no more question my home-
Likeness than your shirt.
Bees sting.
Here am I, grey and cold, warm and gold,
As you see me, if your eyes
Have not lost their close vision
In journeys to inland mountains.
Here am I, stung, filled, moving
Away from the process, finding
With peace at beginning,
A route of familiar sounds
To guide me, beginning in a flower,
Finding darkness.
Bees drink.
Pour no rain on me,
I am not well at your showers.
Leave me entirely, yellowjacket
Leaving a flower to hide its light-tossed face.
Do not draw from afar on my inner resources.
Take, take, do not look back
Leave me my own stamens, flower-bee,
Equal to yours, and to give.
• • •
In the precipitant silence of morning
I rise from a dream in which I died:
No colors are richer for adorning
The day than the tears of death I cried.
One night I held you while I read
Poetry to the darkened wall
Bending over your warm bed
And suddenly I found recall
Of all the passions death had loosed
And all the violence life had brought
And through my body’s rivers sluiced
The tears and fears a lifetime wrought.
You held my hand: I turned from you
To bear my pain and joy alone-
O when, my dear, will you come too
To the feast that’s never done?
I thought to tell you of this time
Sometime, but something holds me back
And I wait as I watch pain climb
Its ever-mounting, fevered rack.
• • •
One said, at last, Write only as
Leaves open on the tree,
Nor knew nor cared what toil it was
Made new green burgeon free.
A lesser sang how joys of youth
Distracted him from song,
And in his age the labored truth
Made grudging hours long.
But no one writes how sorrow
Springs up fine and easily,
Crying, Sing truth tomorrow;
Today it is to die.
• • •
Women who have lost their beauty
With their sorrow do not die:
In Camille death saw his duty
To make breathless each fair sigh.
No one knows how Lola feels;
She sings a charming song, and yet
Throughout her very joy there steals
The sense that woe has paid its debt.
I have loved but once, but lose
A new and old love every day
And sadden until all men choose
To love me. A great price to pay,
But thus I live, and so I grow
More lovely to myself at last,
Adding each sad love I know
Until the present meets the past.
• • •
A wasp flew in
At one window
And dove its thin
Way to and fro,
Then headed for
The next great light.
I, who abhor
Wasps, shut it tight,
Banging the frame
Down. In between,
Sorry it came,
The glass and screen,
It raged to find
A way back in
Which to its mind
Was what to win.
It had not seen
That freedom lay
Beyond the screen
And wore away
Breathless with buzz
Some agonized
Minutes. I was
Apologized
For despite my Fear’s cruelty
When by and by
And suddenly -
Silence. Alone
Once more, I sought
What it had done.
Could it have fought
So enraged thus
That it had died
And escaped us
To the outside?
I’ll never know
It isn’t here.
That we’ll end so
This might make clear;
Evidence said
Its rage could kill,
To pass it dead
Beyond the sill.
• • •
To be without referent
Only one morning - to swing
Freer than the shades of leaves
Dappling with evanescence
Wandering Jew on the sill.
Plant, undersides of its green
Illusorily bloodsoaked
As a severed Medusa,
Solid in clay of pure white,
Too dense for light or shadow
Of its own. Is it better
To mat heavy, know where you’re
Growing, and retain only
The name of a living shade?
Hair, blood, head, heart, growth settle
Against the flown light’s shadows.
To which shall we refer all - -
Shadows moving the sun’s cage;