honeycatacombs


a year later taking eucalypt
honey from neglected hives.
open the lid a slit.
puff the smoke.
convent’s drone rises a semitone.

then the lid comes away
nurses blinded
by Divine Light.
a musty fustiness reaching
nostrils and i am back

in tufa tunnels at san sebastiano.
bees withdraw to their own
tunnels, body-sized cavities
mystical waxy structures
exuded from their flesh

sculpted by their own mouths
hexagonstrong smooth-cylindered
meted out with wingspan precision
unseen micrometers of architects engineers
And as I carefully inspect

shake off each frame my mind is
buzzing with vespas, fiat bambini,
smartcars droning on basalt cobbles
on the Via Appia Antica
of a warm spring day

and we withdraw to cool
tunnels of Death on the other
side of the styx amongst
mortal remains of
christians and jews
united/interred in death




outside the ancient Aurelian city
walls passed on the 218 bus
from piazza san giovanni in
laterano guided unerringly
through labyrinths like Theseus


this contemporary Ariadne’s thread
a masterplan knowledge
of Fixed Action Patterns
inside her head,
a dance of bees.


later spinning frames
in the laundry i watch close as a
lone hatching bee chews the seal
off its own mausoleum emerging
to a world of light devoid

of her congregation of sisters
wondering perhaps am i
in Purgatorio Inferno or Paradiso?


[text © rob walker from micromacro
published by Seaview Press, South Australia 2006
ISBN 978-174-008-415-4 ]