grandfather | To Create...

My grandfather kept bees.

When he was old and done with shoe repair,
a farmer gave him a piece of land
on which to keep his bees
in exchange for his bees’s workin the farmer’s fields.

And when my grandfather came home
from a day with his bees,
it is the scent I remember.

It’s not the same
as opening a jar of store bought
refined honey.

It is a deep rich smell of honeycomb,
filled and emptied,
sweet,
intoxicating.

I close my eyes and I feel my grandfather’s joy.
And know my Polish ancestors’ approval.
I taste his golden elixir.

Nothing
like
store bought.

And that scent,
oh, that scent,
drills deeply into my soul.

I once visited an art gallery in Denver.
I walked into the door and
was transported into that soul space
where bees create
and my grandfather stewards.

An artist birthed an unintended opus in beeswax.

I stood for a very long time
as close as I would be allowed
just breathing.

Breathing in my grandfather’s memory,
being the beekeeper’s granddaughter
honoring him and the bees,
and the artist who would never know this ritual.

Today,
I unwrapped the packages
containing waxed cloth.
Bees waxed cloth, not vegan,
but kinder to the earth than plastic.

These will wrap our homemade bread
to keep them fresh.
With a hint of my grandpa.
And I breathed in that scent,
rich and soul pleasing.

And I sneezed.

And continue sneezing
as I sit and smile
at my grandfather
as he smiles back.

Author’s Note.

Another opus to my grandfather and his bees as it appears in journal issue #12 at Wormwood Press Media.

Day Three

Several measures past,
it is the scent of honey
that brings to faded memory
a focus of silver boxes precisely
nestled between horse meadow and
reaching stalks of wheat.

A golden sweet perfume
decanted, quite foreign
to plastic bears, onto silver
spoon recollects twinkling blue eyes
keen in knowledge of his cache.

My grandfather was a beekeeper.
I, a granddaughter of bees.

Author’s Note:

Today’s prompt from NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo:

“And now for our (optional) prompt! Today I’d like to challenge you to write an elegy – a poem that mourns or honors someone dead or something gone by. And I’d like to ask you to center the elegy on an unusual fact about the person or thing being mourned. For example, if you are writing an elegy about your grandfather, perhaps the poem could be centered around a signature phrase of his. (My own grandfather used to justify whatever he was doing by saying, “well, I can’t sing or dance, and it’s too wet to plow,” which baffled me considerably as a child). Or perhaps your Aunt Lily always unconsciously whistled between her teeth while engaged in her daily battle with the crossword puzzle. These types of details paradoxically breathe life into an elegy, making the mourned person real for the reader.”