Recovery

Recovery

It’s nothing no really it’s nothing

            though they said in the paper…         

            I shouldn’t read the paper

            every story contradicts

            the one before it…they said

            it was the teacher dove in first

            and I’ll give it

            to her she went in first, girdle

            stuck to her like her own

            skin, and when everything came

           

            over her head and she dove

            before any of us knew

            I went right behind her Jesus

            it was cold…later I’d read ‘acute

            dilation of the heart’

            and saw the four girls pressed

            like honeycomb and I tried

            to pry them the way my grand-

            father pried the left edge of the bee-

            hive after blueberry season,

            smoke it then twisted loose

            the screw and all those drunk bees

            clumsy in their muck of honey

            how the perfect comb pours out

            a summer’s work in gold,

            his brush and scrape, the weight         

            of the wax breaking it all

            in two…and he’d lay what remained

            on a table stained with years of it,

            years…

            only those girls, I couldn’t pry

            them apart, I couldn’t haul them all

            to shore, girls all wide and white

            eyes glazing opaque, the way honey,

            when left on the table

            goes dull and muddy until the smoke

            goes and is soon a frenzy, covered

            when recovered, with a buzz

            of women, all wings, all hum and pulse

            and dust until every edge of debris

            is clean and they stumble

            to their broken box, a clean screen

            a stunned queen and hone nothing

            home nothing, drunk on nothing

            but their love.