Full of Bees

by Diane Laboda

A good poem, in t he right hands,

spoons words into the brain

like jasmine honey, fragrant

and sticky and nourishing,

and lets the reader grab

a fistful of honeycomb

from the hive and raise

it above the bees who sweated it,

and wring the meadow from

its cells, leaf and flower,

before it’s mown and bundled

into the barn, still sweet.

And a good poem, in the right hands,

sucks the poet dry, of all

his juices, sending him up

the flagpole to flap in the breeze

and signal that for one moment

he had a honey-coated thought

that oozed out on a page

and stood for some damn thing,

all sticky and full of bees,

leaving the poet high and primed

and the reader full of all ?the possibilities of flight.