BRONWEN TATE
BEESWAX
A short walk to the candle-lit. Night,
day, and seasons made it. Attention carried
that waiting, doors that slowly, skirts to sway in.
Outside summer hummed or rain thrashed, all that
we heard in the pauses. Febrile Pascha, doors
flung from his uplifted arm, shadows ran like voice
after hunger we’d held onto. I looked up. Ordinary
daylight made us sleepier, holding the vowels like habits
that didn’t form sentences. The swung censer, an apostolic
jingling, a time to move aside and bow.
AIRPLANE
Detergent, particular bleached undershirt,
your iron. After altitude I’d learned to
anticipate, a land-locked summer antecedent, not
much left to gape at. Polished floors from your marble
stories, the rolling ruckus emblematic even
then. Armadillo rooted up your lawn, but you
got’im, results an early dead thing. With what
accent, air-conditioning? Pony-eager for porch
swings in a rain storm, I let my feet dangle. Unrelated
okra, your corn and hornets, understood.
STOPLIGHT
When notched logs were no longer
viable, a gift of bells split the whole
asunder. Chainsaw, an unexpected savior,
double semi, severed cord, my mythic
gold-leaf crane unveiling. Radius of the reasonable
distance a given limit they drove circles
around. Then audaciously, watch the news!
Relocation, that impossibility, mixed wet cement,
tore respectfully into wetland, mowed the grass
between rows of blueberries I ran to.