Poem in Belfast
I woke up this morning & drove through
sheets of molten cloudcover
to talk to a stranger about bees.
She talked about gravity—how founda-
tions in hives are redundant.
She talked about talking to bees, oddness
& how it lurks.
I passed through the old new England
windows—and through blueberry
country &
good land for sale—the coffee waitress
had a super high pitched voice
And I imagined her wings moving like
oars
& the heat inside of her. I teetered on the
brink of worry
then watched the fog burn off, listened to
it return—prayed to the god of gray things
because
it was crawling out of the comb of this day
It was almost mothers day and I was the
only man I saw
I could explain how certain moments re-
emerge
in our lifetimes—how loneliness is
billowing brown spores inside
the earth in just such a way
How there is a mathematical precision
which nature
takes time in unfolding—a system
narrowing somewhere
but I look at the harbor and can’t say for
sure
that I’ll ever know it inside & out
can’t even say where my devotion lies or
whether I will raise myself well with the
hive
No foundation, she said, and I pictured
time elastic
acting upon us,
watched the fog envelop the town—
there was peace in that,
—water in all living things.
