photo: ralph murre
The Honey Room
by Donal Mahoney
Brother
Al, in his hood,
is
out in his field
making
love to his bees.
From
my room I can see him
move
through his hives
the
way people should move
among
people.
The
bees give him gold and the gold
turns
orange in the jars
that
he sells in a room
near
the door of the abbey.
The
Honey Room, everyone calls it.
Besides
Brother Al, only I
go
into that room full of honey.
I
go in there and bend
and
look through the jars
on
the shelves and the sills
till
there in the orange I see Sue
standing
straight
in
a field of her own
with
a smile
for
our garland of children.
~
first published in Commonweal Magazine
