Enjoyed a terrific poetry reading yesterday by Linda Bierds, whose new & selected just came out, at my favorite poetry bookstore. (Above is a quilt made by Gayle Bryan as part of a poets & quilters collaboration with Bierds.) Here’s a poem Bierds read to us from her 2005 collection First Hand:
Matins:
Gregor Mendel and the Bees
Slowed by smoke, they slump
from the hive,
benign from the hive they slump,
Father of thorax and wing,
Father of light, they light
on my arm, make light
of my arm, tapering, golden,
Father of darkness receding,
they make from my arm
a candle, a flame, they candle
my arm with backcast
light, affixing the self
to the shell.