The fires have reddened the sun, a pile of hot smoked lox
buried in creamy sky, you sit and watch
folded loosely upon a stiffened chair, suddenly remembering
beneath all this fabric and flesh
is a skeleton
a bony palm which carried a dying honey bee
into eight severed daisies
spine like a swan’s neck, bowed
and then perked
a jaw which unhinged into “You Are My Sunshine”
and knees that folded into cherry pit grass
to pet the velvet body of she who stung you
and is now suffering.
Do you remember how the bee tucked herself
beneath the petals and slowly became still?
While her sisters wove in and out of hydrangea plumes?
Do you remember that the tree was watching?
And too, when you unstuck a crow from the road
and made him a casket, and cried into the ground?