author’s note:
This poem came from a dream--which is a good place to find a poem.
In the dream, I went down into a hollow where a group of men were high on honey. But fortunately, I soon climbed back out.
HONEY POT
Men in a hollow under a railroad bridge
dipping from a big cast-iron pot
of gold honey--
their minds thick
with sugar silliness--
rubber-tongued, they goof and lolly-gag,
pink cheeks wet with honey dew.
On the near concrete pillar, a cantina poster--
the sudsy lady
with sashay froth of flagrant dress
stimulates more ladling--
by men desperate
to fire the coal again--
something deep in the gut
was knocked cold
way early;
they’ve bowed
until now they choke when
they breathe.
Heavy bubbles rise slowly--
sluggish but still giddy from the honey-drunk,
a man opens to what he otherwise might have missed:
through the dark railroad trestles, he watches the clouds
pass, for the first time in a long time
sees the bewildering shift of shapes--
initially, those billows remind him
of the cantina woman
with all her petticoats gushing up.
But as the clouds continue
to burly and wisp above the tracks,
some come to resemble
the childhood storybook horses and dragons--
then--too quickly--
the spinning fillagree hardens
into clog wheels that shadow
the faces bittersweet. The hollow now a pond
of dead goldfish.
But before they can all
fall off their cans, fall
into sleep on the broken-glass ground,
someone near panic catches
them up with a cry of
"Honey!"
and reawakened,
they struggle to regain
their previous exuberance and
rabble
as the master-of-ceremonies spoons up
more drollops dropped from heaven’s candle.
Though the original high has dissipated, there’s enough
warmth left
to settle them
into an easy melt, to extend
their reprieve,
to luxuriate their descent
down a slow numb
slide.
Even though this world has become
too much for these honey-sunken men,
sometimes they still understand
that they actually cherish every choking breath--
even when they arrive
at whatever resides
at the bottom
of that cast-iron
pot of honey.
© 2006, Michael R. Patton
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