Another Anatomy
The Absolution of the Bee
She enters the magenta mouth
burrowing into bright yellow petals
curled and waiting in a circle at the bottom
of the cholla blossom each finger of sun
stroking her in turn each touch leaving
the finest golden dust unseen the red coal
breathing redder inside the striped furred shell
as she goes and goes into that goodness
as if dragged drugged almost stumbling almost
rolling on her back like a dog in grass
not knowing this cannot she cannot last
or so we suppose
So let us be forgiven if
in certain moments we forget the shadow
of our urgent pleasure the dark companion
of this frenzied going in and in as if to dissolve
unbounded forever the best death we can imagine
then coming back through senses stunned alive
to gather what we can with prodigious tongues and six
legs gathering from belly back flanks and head
the sweet gold that feeds our kind of making
O let us be forgiven if sometimes we rise
and swing away on a string of air
(originally appeared in The Albuquerque Tribune)
"Jay Udall intones the singing voice of the primal, the sounds of insects, animals, of lovemaking. He reminds us of 'The Great Secret' that 'ïn the beginning was a hole/ and it made world and word to speak/ into its bottomless ear.' In these poems we feel we are face-to-face with mysteries of earth and creation, mysteries so true, we had forgotten them, till his poems, with frank tenderness, brought them to us again." --Anne Marie Macari