Mel dat rosa apibus

All the vowels
and a star.
The give of things
made clear, all sweet and slow
in the loveliest places,
roses from the East,
beware the stings.

The rose gives honey to the bees
it said. It takes much longer
to say what it means.

The alchemical maxim woke me,
I tried to let the pillow stifle it
but words will have their way.
And which star? Did it mean
all the words breathed out
through its vowels, Ishtar,
Tara, a star?
                                                           I thought of Duncan
walking with Levi up 19th Street,
poet on the young poet’s arm,
the honey of his speech
never pausing long,
the sweetness is the accurate
is what he meant,
what it means,

                                                                                  I thought
of alchemy again, of all the meanings wrought
we still don’t fully understand,
yes, what this meant in the soul
and this in the love-life, yes,
and this in the test tube, yes,
and this in neurons, blood,
bone.
                                   And the bees still feed on
what they feed us
and the rose still thorns,
hands and birds be careful,
the rose still sports its heraldry
in vases on lovers’ tables, yes,

and honey bears the secret
healing powers of the place
itself in which its flowers grew
the bees gathered, ripened,
the place we share,
                                                                      we still
can bring it home in glass jars
and heal our subtler maladies
if we know how, hint, hint,
Hahnemann, hint, hint Dr. Jung.

So much of what we do
endangers bees,
O cure the bees of us,
this disease we sometimes are
even to the simplest flower,

we think they’re simple.
Winter now, and no bee flies.
And before the alchemists even
the poet said Quando
ver venit meum?
And when does my spring come?

1 December 2022