My mother was like the bees
because she needed a lavish taste
on her tongue,
a daily tipple of amber and gold
to waft her into the sky,
a soluble heat trickling down her throat.
Who could blame her
for starting out each morning
with a swig of something furious
in her belly, for days
when she dressed in flashy lamé
leggings like a starlet,
for wriggling and dancing a little madly,
her crazy reels and her rumbas,
for coming home wobbly
with a flicker of clover’s inflorescence
still clinging to her clothes,
enough to light the darkness
of a pitch-black hive.
Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2010 by Jeanne Wagner from her most recent book of poetry, In the Body of Our Lives, Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010. Poem reprinted by permission of Jeanne Wagner and the publisher.