Gone Silent

Recently one of my blogger friends went silent. I hope to find voice in a new way; although it makes me sad that I cannot hear it. Sad because the silence, it seems, was induced by hurtfulness. Or a need to ponder life from another medium. Or something I know not. Whatever the cause, silence is the result, public silence, anyway.

So. I offer this poem. A tribute to a friend whose voice I hear only in my memories. I hope my friend is finding life full and rich and very much alive in other ways.

The Honey Tree (Mary Oliver)

And so at last I climbed
the honey tree, ate
chunks of pure light, ate
the bodies of bees that could not
get out of my way, ate
the dark hair of the leaves,
the rippling bark,
the heartwood. Such
frenzy! But joy does that,
I'm told, in the beginning.
Later, maybe,
I'll come here only
sometimes and with a
middling hunger. But now
I climb like a snake,
I clamber like a bear to
the nuzzling place, to the light
salvaged by the thighs
of bees and racked up
in the body of the tree.
Oh, anyone can see
how I love myself at last!
how I love the world! climbing
by day or night
in the wind, in the leaves, kneeling
at the secret rip, the cords
of my body stretching
and singing in the
heaven of appetite.