Words Like Honey

Words Like Honey

(“When he had spent some time there, he went off again and travelled from one place to another…encouraging all the disciples.” Acts 18:23)

Do you have to words like honey,
the golden ambrosia,
the delicacies prepared with care?

Do the eyes smile when they see you coming,
or do the neck muscles tense like a dining room table?
Do the minds open like butterfly wings each time someone
sings the lyrics you’re known for,
or do the toes of the feet dig into the deep asphalt inside
their shoes?

Let your signature be bold, bold as love.
Let the crossroad where you meet be an axis, an axis of peace.
Aloud or alone,
Crowded or nearly gone,
toss the confetti in the air, the tie-dye tissue flung
over trees while the breeze waves them like aerobic arms
hailing the next season of hope.

Do you have views like chocolate,
the silky burnt umber,
the confections prepared just now?

Truth is hard, but not unlovely.
Love is sweet, but not sickly.
Come, see the forest for the trees,
Come, feel the zephyr that sees
another season than the rusty winter
others insist is coming like midnight.

Come, forecast the brand-new morning,
Come, fancy a sunrise or two
on the river, above the hills
loosely the same as resurrections and
breakfasts on the beach.

Leave the raucous spew; renew the hues of azure,
the sway of wheat upon the sea, the ways of God upon the
coral reefs in all transparency. Fill the table with
bounty (hunted, gathered, shared, donated and piled
higher than the ocean cliffs). Invite the vagrant, the homebound,
the footloose, the shoeless, the spent, the pent-up,
the rested, the divested, the distorted, the contorted,
the last, the first, and best and all the rest

Who simply wait one good word from you,
one taste of honey where they sleep, where they play,
where the mass of air has deflated their best dreams.

Let them hear the beat they can dance to until the
end of the day.