ON A SUNDAY MORNING, THE BLESSING

I received a gift from a poet in Ohio, Robert Murphy.  Reading through I TAKE THEE, ENGLISH.... he shares:

I opened I Take Thee, English for My Beloved, my fingers first arriving, serendipitously, (out of the immigrant shipwreck of his many lives), to "In The Empty Throne Room" -- and later dipped here, there and elsewhere, and will continue to do so like a bee pausing at each flower as the bee's want, in the gathering of pollen and nectar, as if laying down kisses on newly found love -- not knowing what he might bring back to his hermit's hive, solitary worker that he has become, caring for the invisible queen -- so now in prepare of winter's sustain, alongside the clover, honeylocust, and buckwheat flowers; the lavender and thyme of his garden, your own heady honey now thickens and distills, not to say ferments in him -- rich and dark and of the herb and spice of heretofore unvisited lands, and of how in compare he feels pale and bodiless, but having tasted such and refreshed, suddenly feels that he might actually want to live again.

What an ideal response to a poet’s words, and it makes sense the source is a poet, too! And what I appreciate about Robert's response is how, among other things, it gives me a reason to pay attention to an individual poem.  In being so prolific over the years, the emphasis on individual poems is not something I’ve had a chance to relish much.  I went back to read “In The Empty Throne Room” because of his response.  I hadn’t read it since the book came out NINE years ago!  Thank you, Robert, for making me rediscover my own poem:

In The Empty Throne Room

—after Day of the Bees by Thomas Sanchez

The bee keeper cannot speak

“but he is not crippled”

He bears the nose of a "lucky boxer"

who deflected major blows

so the nose is imprinted

but not broken

by the brief, devastating lives

of swung fists

My thighs open to unleash

the honey of the sea—

salty froth before the heated sky of your gaze

Don’t break me, please

The bee keeper cannot speak

but knows to bring the Queen home

Scraps of paper bear his scrawl:

Honey of Lavender, Honey of the Roses

of Abbe Senanque, Honey

of Mont Ventoux, Honey

of Wild Rosemary

We are always surrounded

by the centuries-old musk

of misspent passion from fervent pilgrims

Another man’s gold loops around

my neck whose terrain you have memorized

with bared teeth

You ripped off another man’s gold

to etch your brand around my wrists,

blue veins distended,               throbbing

“People cry at weddings

because they are jealous”

Christ wept when he washed the feet

of Mary Magdalene

for he knew the only parts of her body

he could touch, he could hold,

were Mary’s two feet

already like fishes swimming away,

borne in the river rushing from him

towards a fate of more salt—

“Always, there is the heaven before the hell”

My Love, be a bee keeper

and I shall be your most fertile Queen

At the end of the rain-slick streets of Paris

awaits a honeycomb exuding

a dusty scent of pollen, the sweet

smell of lavender, the pungent

crush of wild thyme                              rising

towards the dawning sky over Cathedral Sainte-Chapelle

***

Tyrone Williams has a lovely interesting essay on the "Oracular Redux" of Robert Murphy (and Ralph La Charity) over at the Poetry Foundation.  Check it out HERE!