The Honey Room

Brother Al, in his hood,
is out in his field
making love to his bees.
From my room I can see him
move through his hives
the way people should move
among people.
The bees give him gold and the gold
turns orange in the jars
that he sells in a room
near the door of the abbey.
The Honey Room, everyone calls it.
Besides Brother Al, only I
go into that room full of honey.
I go in there and bend
and look through the jars
on the shelves and the sills
till there in the orange I see Sue
standing straight
in a field of her own
with a smile
for our garland of children.

Donal Mahoney, whose parents emigrated from Kerry and Cork to Chicago, Illinois, currently lives in St. Louis, Missouri. His poems have appeared in publications in print and online in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Among his first appearances was in Arena, edited in Dublin in the ’60s, by the late Michael Hartnett and James Liddy.