Eating the Honey of Words, By Robert Bly
I remember exactly when I bought this book. DH and I had gone out to Nantucket the summer of my senior year in college. We went on the ferry and spent the day riding rented bikes around the island. I couldn’t believe how quaint it was:shingled houses, grey from the weather and covered with rosebushes, beaches sheltered by grassy dunes, and a downtown full of little shops, including a book store where I fingered volumes of poetry, settling for this one. That night on the ferry back I remember sitting with my back up it’s metal hull reading poem after poem, a certain hunger in me quenched. The span of Bly’s poems in this collection (as in many of his collections) is huge: he speaks with the deeply personal voice of a man in love, caught up in nature, and then with the voice of a philosopher and activist, watching our country lurch forward, and saying words about it that might make all the difference.
Like postcards of memory on my mind:
Last night, nursing Bean I watched the wooden fish mobile from Mexico above his crib turn in slow circles, as though they were swimming in crescents through the air.
The five bright sunflowers, each with rough stalks and thick green leaves, from the farmer’s market for a dollar a piece, standing in a tall glass vase of water on the table.
The man I see often, his hair in long dreadlocks, with his huge Bull Mastiff who was being attacked by a Boxer off leash, screaming”Who’s fucking dog is this, who’s FUCKING DOG is this?” And then wiping the blood from his big dog, who was shaking, tail between his legs.
Bean grinning up at me after his morning nap: so happy to be awake in the world again, his pacifier imprinted on his cheeks.
The view from the shore at the beach near our house: college kids and families on picnic blankets, in the water, playing badminton on the grass. The smell of grills, sail boats their anchor’s down, dotting the swimming area, the sky bright blue.
Bean and DH cheeks close on the beach, laughing together in the evening sunlight, trees folding shadows down around us, sand between our toes.
Cutting fresh sweet corn off the cob in the kitchen with DH after a day outdoors, making pasta with round ripe tomatoes cut into cubes and basil and sage. Then crashing gratefully into each other on the futon couch, eating dinner with the cats curled up against our knees.
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