The comb harvested from wooden hives
was not unlike an apothecary's cabinet.
Every individual alcove made of beeswax
encapsulated honey in prescribed dosages,

a jar of which was set in our window
and amplified daylight a thousandfold.
Early one Saturday of my childhood
the sun prismed through our kitchen,

touching my mother's body here or there
as she bustled around, casting her
for one delicious moment in pure light.
Only memory operates in such a way.

Do not ask, therefore, why time crystallizes
all we have into composite forms of sugar
or why so many hives are split wide
simply for a taste of this brief sweetness.