It's Rare

After Surgery
19 days old

It's Rare

after reading Cherry Blossoms 

by Tess Gallagher

but sometimes first reads are so stunning

  and cast such a spell they beg to never

be read again

 and only in the very least held

held in the taut bowl of the tongue

like the uncasked whisky

after its waited the way

whisky waits for years and years

in the hidden billet

of its maker.   Say you were charged

with waiting like that, all that time while  

a favored tree comes to flower, say

that such an orchard was

planted as a chroniker

and it made modesty an art form

and every year refused

a really big show.  Say the bees

alone appreciate

its unfecund beginnings

and take the news

back to their hive as their own

devotion.  Say the only way

to know it's all ready -

the poem - the spirit - the honey

is to watch the way a word, a breath, 

a hive comes alive at precisely

the right hour and time 

the queen gets briefly loosed of her duties

and bivouacks into the crony

undergrowth and some of her all  

ten thousand virgins girdle her

while the far off efflorescence,

sssssshocked with all that calling,

is song drop song drop song drop 

on and along their petals in a sort 

of May squall that to watch 

in the debouching heat of the morning 

is to unbung the abiding into the copper ladle,

to sniff with the expertise

of a goddess.  And because

the tongue is always the last to know,

if you think about how

breath works, how taste

works.  Try this: breathe. Breathe

all the way in to where

the tremor begins

and hold it there.  Hold it

while all around the outside of you

knocks and knocks to get in.

And it's days (and by then

it's changed and changed)

before you can

let it.