After swimming, my son rescued a bee from my bedroom. I find sugar crystals; he rolls his finger in them – the sugar sticks. The bee is pale, fading, and exhausted. Then she finds the sugar, and a long, strong, silvery tongue begins to feed. Her tongue goes backwards and forwards, sucking up the sugar for a few minutes before her little body begins to shine, regaining colour and lustre. Then she washes her legs, tries out her buzz, and flies away.
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I’m reminded of circumcising the heart- the time in Assisi. Standing in the white room with the bright altar and the monk and the dry Old Testament pages. There was a jug of arum lilies, erect on thick stems, white and red, waxy, sensuous, they had stiff yellow stamens. Early morning, sun shining, bells ringing and outside the screaming swifts carved the hot scented air into heavenly segments. The pink of bougainvillea in the pots at the door. My heart becomes a penis engorged as I pray; I remember as I write that the heart has no skin to lift, no foreskin to pull back; the heart is an organ exposed, so tender to touch.
When I left he hugged me and said quietly “come back.”
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I remember the burning bush kindling at my knees: men stood there, lit the taper. The flames breathe out of time with my heart. Yellow fire shapes my pregnant belly, stains the underside of my milky udders like a lick of pollen; I’m a horse of the plains led by you between smouldering silver birch branches; I’m white with blackened limbs; smoking handfuls of leaves and empty stalks fill my mouth: my tongue is crisp, wordless. Dried seed-cases and shrivelled flowers are pushed into my ears: the man’s arm thrusts endlessly into my heart, autumn comes in June.