Self-Portrait with a Bee in my Mouth
I said no—and then it was abuzz inside me,
all wings, restless—
Raw lust for romance—
*
You were undressing, peeling off
the thick socks you'd sweat through.
It wasn't you I'd refused.
You smelled of cut grass, your back ached,
you closed your eyes for a moment
before I kissed you in what I believed was silence.
But the buzz started up, hovered
as I searched out your lips, as I pulled you toward me,
as I succumbed
to the force of your lips . . . .
*
Though I kissed, of course, you,
not the forceful domination of his lips.
*
Like a bee in a glass jar, my mind buzzes—
But the bee is in my mouth.
*
The buzzing, sometimes, is so quiet
I don't know it's there.
I've tried to tempt it out.
Weeding the garden, I nuzzle my cheek
against the thick-veined petals, fragrances
rising like incense.
Only more fly in.
I have only to touch you to be suddenly lifted
into the cradle of your arms, to surrender completely. . . .
*
I lose you in the buzzing.
(All wings, restless,
and a kind of anger in it:
an open flower, a prairie rose
a little past bloom and still unattended—)
*
See how close a body can come to having wings.
They pick and play me, as if I were made for them.
*
What was I made for, then?
