Lost Art

Lisa Caloro

At three a.m. I stand in an uncertain shed
breathing thick, heavy heat. The drunk man 
I drove here after the bar closed pulls frames 
of honeycomb out of boxes, identifies the type— 
clover, citrus, basswood deep as roots. 
My fingers press into comb after he rakes off wax;
honey weeps like amber sweat, primordial ooze 
of natural selection and methodical habits learned,
bad decisions licked from fingertips dirty with an afterthought
of midnights past where bare lightbulbs and turned-down
eyes lit the best way home.
Buckets of sweetness stand in the way of the door
but he is talking about bees, his humming connection to a universe
so complete that any other perfection is a joke—people
are too easy to figure out. I am a bystander, though useful,
there are universes to be transferred like hives loaded onto pick-up trucks.
This universe is dripping like moonlight down tree branches,
slow and syrupy like drunk dancing on hardwood floors with weepy
knots, slick and silent as the arms of a lead with steel-toed boots.
Half dead bees stumble onto his fingers. I am alarmed by his violent flick,
the bees lit on their own power and how it will kill them. Everything is sticky
like closed mouths and ransacked desire. I walk back
into the darkness, dispose of my pollen, drink the deep gold
of this universe, one I can find
on my own.