Bees

Homewards, I pass our local monastery,
small windows pour light onto the dark:
monks in contemplation in their cells.
As I reach my home and turn the key,
the town winks out behind my back.

I love the winter power-cuts, when I dream of bees
and the summer days I sunbathe in the garden,
nostalgic then for winter ghosts and hearth-fires,
and all around the drone among the flowers:
a gathering in before the days begin to cool.

In the kitchen, I strike matches; candles blaze.
Then spread thick slices with the glinting bronze
dripped from autumn’s cloistered honeycombs,
whose wax like solid silence lifts the light:
a dozen summers on the candles’ lips.