The Wave

And trying as you need me
to keep it simple I can tell you
that the bees were able
at all times to pass safely
through the glass, their wings
rubbing briskly if needed
as they moved from one side
of the window to the other,
though the store sold appliances
not honey—used refrigerators
and stoves mostly—so it was
odd to begin with, that hive,
and in any case no one could
recall anymore why the grandfather
long dead had installed it
in the storefront when he’d opened
for business, its combs dark as
cribs alive with swarm—dark wax,
and the darker honey dotted
by vast, tilted galaxies of pollen—
a tunnel connected a hole
cut in the glass to the hive,
a tube of transparent plastic
three or four inches in diameter
big enough that the bees
could pass as they wished—
but touch your fingers
to that window & in its vibrations
you would feel a warmth
flowing slowly up your arm
and as if within hearing distance
of your breathing just then
often enough it seemed a bee
would emerge from the tunnel
by itself, a completeness of one,
hovering, testing the air—
and after a while as you stood there
it’d feel like watching a woman
as she steps into lapping waves—
low tide, the labyrinth of granite
slabs she’d navigated through
the tide pools behind her now,
open sand beneath her feet,
the ocean a part of her day
she walks into cold water
in an old, aquamarine two-piece,
guided by something invisible
to clarity itself, some part of her
secret self—it feels good
to have the ocean in her hair,
restoring—pale skin, some
freckles, legs that seem to go
all the way to the sky
because the point of view
you watch her from is that
of a single spiny sea urchin
hugged to a rock below—
you’d been thrust into this life
you felt—for so long you’d felt
as if it rose up before you
like a wall, solid, immoveable . . .
but you began to understand . . .
it’s much more intimate
than that . . . nothing is solid . . .
you exist in the thoughts of
others as much as you do
in your own, the thoughts
of all those who saw you,
even if, like this woman,
it was only once—she’d glanced
at you in town the day before
while riding her bike—
she was holding the top
of her blouse with her left hand,
the fingertips of her right
steering the handlebar
lightly—a button had popped
loose from the blouse—
and she was a little cold
but awake now—salt
of a wave on her lip. Trust me.
The wave is not the water,
the water only tells us
that the wave is going by.