Marc Wiegand has participated at a number of universities and institutes, among these the University of Texas at Austin, and the British Institute for International and Comparative Law. He has been an Affiliate Fellow in visual arts at The Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Umbria, Italy. His poetry has appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Blue Unicorn, The Penwood Review, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Westward Quarterly, and, soon, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets, and The Madrigal Press. He is an international lawyer, writer and exhibiting visual artist who lives and works in the Texas Hill Country. Some of his published work can be found at: https://www.artmarco.net/works

Honeycombs

Death is such a noun
it has no need of adjectives.

1.
Begun like a bit of flotsam bound
by the lost and found of time and space,
upon a dancing heather, sown
and served like a bag of bones, his face
(leathery) fled or left or flown
to the stars by night (“from dust to dust”)
resolving to this present clay,
the keeper of bees was found from his past
by a recent priest and a Constable’s pen
that spoke of his death like a simple fact
or a word for which there is no reply,
a sentence sown by the wind that spent​
the syllable of the sun (at play)
in the guise of his morning after death,
in a field of blossoming heather, rent
by the brighter language of that day.

2.
He lay at the edge of the mothering bog
in a blanket of brush (a canvas cap
and a jacket), found by the wind as it passed,
by the flutters and flow of indifferent gusts
(that could answer questions none would ask),
that sought and searched the heather at dawn,
that fingered his hair and his collar and cuff,
(at play upon his windless noun)
and for all of the saints (though gone), he looked
as if shaken would wake, and would rise, and would say,
but (for death) he would not.

3.
The official record (evidence) shown
for the public: “Shoulder: broken (cold
as stone), and cold as any touch.
Both lips were cracked and parted, caked
(his empty skin) with common dust,
as if a final word was caught
and struck from his speaking tongue.
His delicate wrists (that reach) were jut
from the ovals of his shattered sleeves,
where fingers, gnarled as any oak,
were curled and tossed (like empty shells).
His knuckles (bare and bloody) tucked
to his stubbled chin, as if in thought
(like a child) to ponder death’s surprise,
where once he tossed and tied what cloth
of the tattered scarf and collar kept
the warm (before) to his singing throat,
but not (this day) his wintered neck.

4.
The Constable’s notes took note of the bees
that attacked the blossoming heather (wrapped
in their bells and dusty pollen), raped
and drunk on golden nectar (sucked).
Their humming rose and fell and flew,
and seemed (for all) as if they knew
(still took no notice of their kill)
to his puzzled wonder of their guilt.

5.
The keeper of bees was immoral born,
and immoral lived and died, unsoiled
by a conscience he could not afford.
He owned adulteries neither priest
nor memory could absolve, forget,
though all of the county long confessed
(and a common knowledge long unfurled)
his rustic history (all embraced)
in the blackmail of their common world,
and a secret glory coined and blessed
by the wonders of catastrophe.

6.
So, did the bee keeper’s death become
a living gossip (reigned), his heir,
a topic of dark review that walked
from brook to brier where wags professed,
and the local lads around the shire
conspired to air the little they knew
and all the speculation guessed.
“And would he be found at all”, they spoke,
“but for the priest and his collie (the lass),
with her nose in the heather, and Father Joe rapt
in the Book of Psalms on his way to Mass
(and probably smellin’ of whiskey).”

7.
Then out of their drunken pubs they come
(the derelict diggers) to pray his soul
with their rakes upraised (to bury his loss),
and with rosaries breaking the earth he owned,
to furrow his bed with a tree for a cross,
and the mountain he tilled for his only stone.

8.
Where the mist of a mourning winter slept
on his father’s fence (there stoned by his hand),
they came to his wake, and their presence blessed
the driving tooth of the blade (when set)
to blood and rut their narrow lot
(the stones and the field of their hollow years),
to suffer the sins that bend and begin
their numberless, numbered days (again
and again) for the sudden kiss once poured,
forgiveness rained in the mouth of the world,
a crop of prayer from the tendered earth
blossoming into the light, once plowed,
no testament (word) enough, except
that his shallow death was such a noun.

Epilogue:

Where they, who striving, reach and take
forbidden apples (all their curse)
from the tree of knowing, and must rake
their ruined gardens’ old remorse,
must pay the tariff of their freight.

Where honeybees are amber, kept
in their hallowed boxes (bound and flown),
they reach and sting without repent,
though all abide the injury sown.

Where all are churched in slow belief
that bears the burden and the weight
of the mortgage leant for all they own
(the skin and pubs of their blind faith),
for the suffered grace of honeycombs,
for the favors of their chambered balm
from which their honeys, strong and sweet
(though impermanent), are sought and drawn.

The Hours

(For Jivan Lee, Painter, Taos New Mexico)

1.
When and where will the hours dance?
Where the winds have brushed between wet stones.
Where the brook has lipped and glints (by chance)
between run banks that water owns.
When light expels the dark expanse.

2.
There is quiet work in the hills at dawn.
Winds mime the dance of day that roams
by the amber drone that bees distil
from prairie brush their honeycombs,
by the grace of their flown bodies paid.

3.
When the coming clouds come offering shade
by their moving shapes (from where you stand)
you must never trade their slow delight,
the dappled hills you cannot command.
Such providence belongs to night.

4.
Then, wait for the final dance to flow.
The wind will shift, come round, begin,
and whispering “goodbye” will go,
will lift the murmuring skirts of dark
to let the rumored darkness in
(walking across the dark plateau).

5.
The shadows of cloud on the prairie know
you are the movement of the wind,
the honeybees of afternoon,
the slow romance of the dappled hills.
Take dusk by its proffered hand. Begin.
You are the brook between the stones.
You are the banks that water owns.
You are the final dance, until …

Look how the shapeless night can hold
a mirror to fading lights that blend.
The clouds in the sky and the canyon know,
you are the industry of the wind.

Catterline

(for Joan Eardley, painter)

The coastal road here skirts the coast
as you leave Aberdeen,
the North Sea on your left.
You putter down to Catterline
where rows of cottages hug the earth,
and lurch the path above the bay.
Within your sanctuary hut,
the reek and taint of turpentine
prove winter’s knocking at the door.
The walls of local stone are warmed
by your neighbor’s hearth (the other side),
and yield to your searching touch,
the warmth that you deny.

The whitewashed walls, and the stubbled fields
that stitch the snow, are rough,
like the calloused palms of your paint-stained hands,
like the bristles of your brush.

In the curve of its noisy arms, the cove
that holds the empty harbor tempts
the breaking waves on the shingle beach
(as far as the water comes and goes)
that’s strewn with fishing boats and hemp,
far as the making tide can reach.
Old oars uphold the drying nets.

You cannot judge this raw estate
until you’ve known and bear
its standing glory in your bones,
and look its candid squalor square
in the poverty of its honest face,
and make from it, with artless slums,
the opulence of honest paint.

Now all the chameleon seas
displace the fumbled shore,
where the tides have roamed all year
which blown will lift and roar,
or lagged with deep repose draw near
to spend their whispered coin
(spindrift) upon the concrete pier.

Sonnet 54: Astor Piazzola

Give me your hand, your life, your love, your mind.
I’ll give you a broken heart with all its cold debris,
erase your troubled trove of self,
cast darkness on the surface of your sea.

We’ll dance to mad milongas in the surf
that breaks, and listen to the rollers hiss
and whisper loss as they recede. Your days
will run like waves into a dark abyss.
You’ll bleed, of course, but sing as you’ve never sung
before, as if a song  brings love or breath.
It won’t. Still, never trade your song for truth:
each day is one day closer to your death.
And since reality ignores  your loss, what then?
Illusion. That’s where to start.  That’s where to end.