I went to the basilica to buy beeswax.
Wishing to smell honey’s cursive in
the air, as I tauten the poem’s line
tonight, moon in my mind as the day

finds the center. I want to smell the
labor of worker bees, their mirror
glands. In my room time won’t know
where to begin. I rhythm the melt that

hardens, flame that slows, bright
as the hour’s liturgy. Desire burns
the paschal light. To word the long-
lasting, echo bronze and the pyramids,

I let the sacred and the profane in,
Union of opposites. Echoes. So below,
night’s altar transfigured. Above what
remains the same but altered.