Poem for the Month of May, 2001

"The Lavender Minutes"
by Luke Davies

Seventy-seven times – I don't exactly count but it's a nice number –
the bee gulps greedily from the lavender flowers he's harvesting,
and seventy-seven times the purple cups quiver and bounce
as if a single arrow of breeze were singling them out one stem
at a time. So I concentrate on the bee. I am in the realm of
one minute at a time because that's where concentrating on the
bee takes me. It's a place to bow down in. Goulument
is how the bee drinks: lustily, greedily, the two words together.

You'd say: "Je t'embrasse goulument” – I kiss you greedily –
and the idea is drinking at the fountain of the bounteous.
One minute at a time I am in the fleeting bounty and subject
to caprices of the weather. The bee lives for a week or two
and this is where sorrow comes in: seventy-seven heartbeats
and already a minute is gone. Even as the world rolls on and time
itself devours itself the condition is voraciousness. The thunderstorm
arrives, broils. Enter lightning; in a flash the bee is gone.

 

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