By Katharine Coles

Bee

All summer I buzz, I depart
and return. My body knows where
dandelions release their nectar,
and, later, marjoram.

Who are you to tell me what
memory is, what’s to come?
I carry desire in my legs, pockets
aglow. I dwell not upon

The future, but in it. All my
going and coming prepares
the world to slow. Soon,
the sealing of the hive,

Then, settling, my body will rev
its furnace. Then winter.

Pelican Takes My Hand

for a fish leaping, and later
I have to ask who

owns what, when
What won’t let go? We’ve all

made error out of hunger
over our heads. Now gulp,

repeat: hurricane churning
offshore doesn’t

drown, not swell nor sea
but panic, the body

forgetting itself how
it breathes not water

but air. In the moment
bird lets go to catch

its own breath, and
again, finds it

gone. Later, regrets
the one that got away. Or

Let go becomes Okay,
Forget, move on.

Katharine Coles’ recent books include Wayward (poems, Red Hen Press, 2019) and, from Turtle Point Press, Look Both Ways (memoir, 2018) and The Stranger I Become: essays in reckless poetics (2020). A Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, she has received awards from the NEA, the NEH, and the Guggenheim Foundation.