Other Devils

Once the bees ignite under my feet,
a brotherhood is sealed, a secret handshake,
a vendetta, the spiraling pinpricks
of worthy swords. Each sting-
an announcement.

Like affable torturers, they know
enough of pain to stop once the confession
has been achieved. What lasts
is not the sting, not
the swell of implanted knobs
from the end of lightning sparks,
not even the ache that spotted a few
honest branches of my body. No,

what lasts is the internal honey;
a shared fear: theirs-
entrapment, instinctual, ancient
and worthy of blooming now
and again. Mine-the dewy
awareness of having awakened
their sting by my stumblings,
the disregard for sacred land,
my foolishness for thinking hives
harbored only in trees, beneath
the overhangs of old houses,
in the compartments and symmetry
of the beekeeper's chambers.

And when the m�l�e ends,
I am not killed; I am not frozen or left
bloody on the path. They retreat,
or else are banished by my struggle,
arms swinging, the flight of legs, a few
heart-shaped tears, a plea or two.

But I will carry their venom past the edge
of the forest. Soon the snow of a long winter
will encourage hibernation. Soon
I too will sleep, venom soaked, confessing
to love the beauty of their defense
the swiftness of the attack and the humbling
victory. In my failure I kneel:
blessed, honey-full, immune to other devils.

The Beauty of Faces

We hold tightfisted to the beauty of faces
because photographs have no sound
unless we tap into the orchestra behind them,
try to hear the family's voices piped
and whistling the day they were recorded
as we can only imagine how glaciers
moving in and out of the landscape
create sound spacious enough to crack
the horizon. So, too, the hiss and spit
of the northern lights must be dreamed
because our ears are inefficient
as old telegraph wires.

So the house
on South Colony Street carries
children's laughter up the front stairway
sloping toward the kitchen
where Josephine's peeled oranges hum
like music from the Victorola
filling the heart with remembrance and history,
pulling toward a place called home.

                                                                                                � Amy Nawrocki

Loch Raven Review Spring 2006 — Vol. 2, No. 1
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