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blood, like brooding,
    to make a fool of motive,
    love’s long held embarrassment.
BEES
    First to bloom at last
        this late spring
    the crabapple’s a wain
        of white the ox
    sun is hauling homeward.
    Humbles brawl on top,
        goaded by syrups,
    the rut of work so far
        from the wing-lit
    hive of their making.
    A bent toward folly argues
        for intelligence.
    They’ll break with the past
        as with an enemy.
    The flowers cry to them!
    •
    Left behind, in clover’s
        common sense,
    a solitary honeybee
        plies her trade.
    Circumspect, all twelve
    thousand eyes are trained
        on her needlework:
    genetic cross-stitch
        and pollen purl.
    Her pattern is the field’s.
HUMMINGBIRD
    There is no hum, of course, nor is the bird
    That shiver of stained glass iridescence
    Through which the garden appears—itself
    In flight not from but toward an intensity
    Of outline, color, scent, each flower
    An imperium—as in a paragraph of Proust.
    Mine is a shade of that branch it rests on
    Between rounds: bark-wing, lichen-breast,
    The butternut’s furthest, hollow twig.
    How to make from sow thistle to purslane?
    So, into this airy vault of jewelweed,
    Slipped past the drowsing bee watch,
    Deep into the half-inch, bloodgold
    Petal curve, tongue of the still untold.
    Deaf to tones so low, the bees never mind
    The dull grinding, these rusted gears
    Pushed to the limit of extracting
    From so many its little myth of rarity.
OVID’S FAREWELL
    What was my fault? A book, and something I saw.
        The one he never read, the other
                   He was author of.
        Not his daughter—her adulteries
        Were with boys from other men’s beds, mine
    Merely with women from other men’s poems—
    But his empire. He had long since made his Peace
        And thereby the fear that would keep it,
                   The commerce of praise
        And the short sword, a vomit that cleanses
        The palate. The same horses that tear
    The flesh at night by day drive over the tribes.
    The quarry falls into his toils. We all have
        Our methods of conquest. Even me.
                   Mine was the dove-drawn
        Chariot named Illusion, cockeyed
        Laurel crown, and whispers on the way.
    I could have chosen another theme—the sons
    Who kill their fathers, the brothers who salt each
        Other’s cities, or the empire’s spawn,
                   Glistered avenues
        To sacrifice, bloody baths and nets.
        But mine was love-in-idleness scratched
    On an apple. In that sweet anatomy
    Of desire he smells a treason. Woodland
        Shrines and pillow-books, the subversive
                   Mirror, its fragrant
        Incestuous tear beneath the bark—
        These conspire against the down-turned
    Thumb, policy for sale with chalk on its feet
    And locks around its heels. When gods make themselves
        Into men, they become less than men,
                   A human desire.
        When men would be gods, they pass new laws
        And strengthen the Family. Like gods,
    Then, they breed contempt and their own betrayal.
    Though whatever work I tried turned under me
        Into verse, the spells and bullroarers
                   Of family life
        Resisted all but a low satire,
        The cold late supper of everyday.
    I had chosen and loved a life in the shade,
    A cough, certain oils, her blue lips from under.
        It was from such shadows that I saw
                   His daughter come to
        Kick against his rule. I ignored her,
        Of course, but one of her slaves had seen
    Me, and seen a way to pay for his freedom.
    Slaves, our living shades, are like readers, always
        Eager for a new master. Lovers
                   Look for somewhere else
        To live, and when they find it, they