The One Who Knows Where Honey Lies

Author’s note: This poem was inspired by a moment of complete and total rejection. Through that unsavory experience, I came to realize that there is sweet liberation in forgiveness. Sometimes we are the heartbreaker and sometimes we are the heartbroken.

Sometimes we berate ourselves for being foolish or naive, while demonizing the other for being reckless with our hearts. I think the truly wise are able to see beyond the dualism, and ultimately recognize that we play multiple roles at once.

I wanted to write something that showed the beauty of both the wounded and the one who wounds.

When the bees swarm and begin their house hunting through the forest I wonder,
do the trees, the ones riddled with cavities and hollow trunks
pray to be chosen, to be filled with the charged humming of a colony?
Or does the thought of all that work and sex and death
create a whirl of whispers amongst the canopy?
Or do the trees say nothing at all
and in their auspicious silence therefore become hospitable?

Turned towards the south, sheltered in the treetops.
This, I am told, is where life begins again for these settlers
who are too busy now, gathering and producing to be concerned
with the tireless whereabouts of one wet nosed thief
who could so easily evict them from their home
with a single slap of the claw.

The Bear with all his under fur does not feel
the coming of winter the way we humans do.
Rather, he detects change through the stirring inside himself.
A restlessness that propels him to walk further into the woods.
To seek out the sweetest thing along his path.
To stop for nothing but that one true sound.
To discover that sweetness indeed speaks.
If only we would learn to listen.

When the hive falls from the arms of the tree
there is nothing left to do but let the soft earth catch it
and watch as the bear devours the broken down beauty of an empire in ruins.
Please, try not to judge the affairs of this sweet toothed animal
who will now spend a winter dreaming of bees, brood, and comb.
This Bear, this predator, this worshiper of honey
only answered the call of his wild self
which brought him face to face with his beloved.

Haven’t you ever stretched the great muscle of your tongue
to taste that which is foreign, and delicious, and in front of you?
Haven’t you ever been astonished by your own violent hunger
and found yourself shameless in the face of desire?
Haven’t you ever communed with the thing you craved by tasting it
only to discover there was nothing left to lick?
Haven’t you ever bowed in front of royalty and felt humbled
by the majesty that left you in this swirling state of rapture?

 

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