Recurring Dream
Hole In the Sky
Nothing, or nearly so,
These thin molecules of air,
Water vapor collected
So high it’s crystallized,
The ice of a cirrus cloud
Lit by reflected light
And the slant of evening sun
Rendering this whole blue nothing
Something.
Then the hand, old, instinctively wise,
Darting across toned paper,
The scratch, scratch of a pastel . . .
There! Do you see it?
A hole in the sky!
Sometimes,
If we push hard
Against the skin of the world,
It will give enough
To allow us a moment, nearly nothing,
Maybe, but something,
Even if it’s just a hole in the sky
That calls us to remember,
Then shows us
Why we do what we do.
—Bob Wickless
When Honeybees Were Everywhere
Once, honeybees covered the clover-carpeted
ground, their steady hum linked so closely
with the clovers’ heavy heads and thread-like
stems it could have been, instead, the language
of these fragrant flowers — perhaps what they
whispered to one another in the early morning
light on a summer day as the barefoot children
burst from their houses and the dogs began
to bark and the milkman with his thick-soled
boots tromped through the yards, and mothers
dragged their laundry baskets across the grass
while bees scattered and the clover, briefly
trampled, rose again — their pale, dew-damp
faces poised to receive the bees’ next kiss.
– Terri Kirby Erickson