Apiary 40

The humble sense of being alive   

under the towering sun   

fills the nectary and ripens apricots   

down to the last one,   

if Mnemosyne wakens from apathy   

each moment. It is the soft burly sound   

of a bee tumbled in fritillary,   

is it not?   

But if memory, as if to illustrate   

the mind was not yours to have,   

the mind was not given,   

fails us, leaving us in our underpants   

in the garden, should we not   

hate the garden,   

or the woman whose garden   

it is? And sunlight. Thunder.   

Rain. Hardened in heart against   

what earth compels and seizes,   

goddamning, goddamned rain.