She won’t be held
in pants with tightly buttoned waists,
their tailored creases knifing into
glittering conversations. She won’t enter
the clamorous avenues of your angular world.
Her roundness deflects your demands.
She will not offer you mirrored surfaces, the comfort
of your own high-powered reflection. She is mute
that way. She holds her counsel as she holds
the undulant hive that spins sunshine
in the moonlit chamber of her symmetry.
Her home is in the round hills. You have to climb
a long way to reach her and then
the mouth of her cave is hidden in thickets of box thorn,
prickly pear, nettles, desert mallow.
You have to want her enough to go looking for her.
You have to shed your city clothes, risk being stung
on the soles of your feet. You have to be brave.
You call, call out.
Your voice echoes off the red hills, disappears
in the thin, sage-scented air.
You turn away. And then, just perhaps,
you’ll hear it–
a single thrumming note that builds, reverberates,
a stream of golden honey from a hundred thousand bees
pouring into the startle of your ear.