Elizabeth Joy Levinson

Recovering

Some days he travels for hours
at best, makes seven knots
and sees no one.
The waters are charted,
but these edges of the Intracoastal,
too soft and too green.
Like the history of his veins,
they are murky.

In the waters
no one asks him to speak
no one tells him to stop talking
the dolphins don’t care what he does,
they flank the sides of the boat,
they may stay with him for a while,
or not.

It’s okay, alone
running aground,
the keel buried in silt.
He waits,
as the tide rises
he floats away.

When he passes through more solid territory
buildings take footing and floodlights
falsely pull creatures from the sea
shorelines take shape.

Forty years ago
there were nights on the beach
when he slept soundless as the sand
that stuck to his cheeks
but even here,
in slow currents
it continues to compel him.
Standing with the tiller between his legs
he gently shifts away.
Where he sees no one
neither is he seen.

Recovering first appeared in Hobble Creek Review, 2011.

The Beekeepers

What makes them do it,
these strange men who love
a thing that is dying.

Each day they suit up,
like monks or astronauts,
mysterious as either.
They count the carcasses
each one so light.
Those that are left
beat furious wings,
a dead march
that moves the beekeepers
from hive to hive.

Each day they must decide
to divide the colonies,
rebuild
or sell them off–
there will always be those
who have not yet known
the bitter aftertaste
that follows
the harvest of the comb.

This is something I would like to try:
in a field of clover,
to watch them over,
to press the bellows
of a tin smoker
to wave it around
making grey clouds
to move in and out
pulling each tray
with hope for the quiet hum,
for the brush of a furry thorax
against my wrist,
where my gloves might slide down
leaving skin exposed.

The Beekeepers first appeared in Grey Sparrow Journal, 2011.

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