Allen Braden

Sweet, Sweet Light

The comb harvested from wooden hives
was like an apothecary's cabinet.
Each individual alcove of beeswax
encapsulated a dose of honey,

a jar of it setting on our windowsill
amplified the light of morning.
Early one Saturday of my childhood
the sun prismed through our kitchen,

touching my mother's body here or there
as she bustled around, bronzing her
for one delicious moment in light.
Only memory operates in such a way.

Do not ask, therefore, why time crystallizes
all we have into composite forms of sugar
or why so many hives are split wide
simply for a taste of brief sweetness.

Restoration

I dream again this night
a sedan swallows you whole:
the green glass of its hatch
snapping shut between us,
the munch of crushed gravel
as you are whisked away…

But almost waking, I see you
sprinting down familiar fields
inside a body renewed
after yours had given out.
I see you, Mother, I see you breathing
that cold air full of lilac and clover.

Alive and free from the nicotine,
the deafness and malignancy,
you are in charge of your body again,
a joy almost forgotten. You are restored
to where you belong from now on,
restored to the Wyoming of your youth.

Allen Braden is the author of A Wreath of Down and Drops of Blood and Elegy in the Passive Voice. His work is forthcoming in The Laurel Review, Indiana Review and Southern Quarterly. Braden lives near the historic site of Fort Steilacoom in Lakewood, Washington.

Artwork: “Blob Tree” by Daniel Lurie

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