Sky Burial (Dana Levin)

Sky Burial by Dana Levin

This poem, Spring, is representative of everything good about this book:

SPRING

Forensic Anthropology Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

1

The sun, in shafts and spades.

Through the pine and birches, little breeze setting off
the leaves—

Their gold green increase.

Pollen to the air, its colonial dream
of a new imperium of trees—

Snap against the wrist-skin.

And then you press down on the tongue with your gloved thumb
to let the honeybee show you the way.

2

The dark tunnel paths from light to light.

Flay the face and scoop out the eyes—you’ll see.

3

Bees in a cloud round your hand.

Egg-herder, you smell
synonymous with treasure—

Shining a light at the back of the throat
blowflies
in liquid pearls
the bees murder to eat—

And all at the lips and nose a yellow dust, pollen
they have

delivered—

You scrape it into a little sack.

4

Ripple and snap.

Bend to the O of the rigored mouth—listen:

Plastic bags, like souls, caught in trees.

5

What to harvest
from the sloughed-off suits of the dead.

Like seashells cupping the ghost-tongue of the sea,
their black mouths speak—

You crouch to the hum with a bag and a blade. You

the god it sways.