If you're literary, you write, you read a lot.
So you've got a bunch of stuff bouncing around
inside your head.
And I was involved with someone.
We broke up some time ago.
And shortly before it broke up, an event
similar to the one in this poem took place.
And I had just been rereading Romeo and Juliet.
So that figures a little bit in here
on the scene as summer outside New York City,
in the country outside New York City visiting friends.
She and I went out to visit these two friends of ours.
The title of the poem is "Honey".
"We four were fat with talk under their fresh painted
pergola.
You giggle.
He told us how he chicken wired dirt chaos
into that terraced garden.
She announced road stand watermelon.
While the smart scout did its work.
Yellow jackets write such precise expectations
on the air.
You dummied up when one sensing sweet melon flesh
alighted to sample nectar on your lips.
I watched it wanting more, wanting in
to probe your tongue.
And you watched me as if I were someone or somewhere else.
The day before, for no reason, death that hath
sucked the honey of her breath looped in my ear,
and now came again while we waited for the sting
or cry that didn't come.
Romeo's words played back like nonsense rhymes
when this morning's storm drained yellow jackets
to my ligustrum tree.
Its spermy scent plied with sweet broom and lemon blossoms
like those in their garden when the wooer petted your mouth.
And you smile as if you knew it couldn't hurt.
Your eye on me, making sure we knew
you make your charms available, but don't give them away."