The Beekeeper

She is veiled, white gowned,
holding by its neck
a metal rooster that clucks with smoke.
Under the cottage cheese blossom
there’s a fae circle of wooden homes.
With a gloved hand
she snaps the propolis
under the gabled roof; a behemoth bride
revealing a giant’s causeway of honeycomb
capped with cream,

a trove of bees
and some sing like coins.
She scrapes away old wax chalices
and eventually finds her queen –
her autumn pinecone back
her embroidered, onyx eyes.

When she returns, I kiss her lips
and feel the chant of their wings
I smell the sleeping ash
and taste the sweetness of gold.