Dancers

The bee drifts from the lily and the lily fronds
bow. Some color is involved, changeably
according to breeze and shadow.
By the lake people are doing something
with a bar-b-que or a boat
while others do something with plates.

Some of those I love have left the world.

If the sun continues and the blue sky burns
and the sea reaches into itself almost lazily
for food and the arithmetic of what looks like
grace (until it kills you), what use my grieving
hope? Something blue-black soughs in me
like a storm of ancient invitation and regard.

But some of those I love have left the world.

Any moment heralds will announce the feast
and dancers, draped in tiny bells,
will step and turn along the twilit shore
and who will hear them, and who will rise
from sleep or death to dance among them
the dance of the bee who returns alone

into his own country?

Copyright © 2009 Christopher Howell All rights reserved
from Burnside Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission