Canterbury Landscape

I use to hike through Flankers’ un-cobbled street With easel and canvas hawking my mind Sketching the apiary’s tenement Dull gray boxes densely scattered Through the Spanish needle blooming wild The brimming bees thought of me sometimes Like a pest … intruding their waist waggling contrariness And chased me in their screaming hive Yet I kept going back there, incessantly, again and again Something about them I could not shake from my pain, From my matted mind, merging mnemonics of visual antics Something more than husking their honey songs, frantic anxieties Before the reap nectar joy, in deep abyss of altered memories The image tabernacles … perched precarious icons faultless Houses like matchboxes on tendril feet Crablike clings on clustered rocks defying defeat I lived there safe from the menace of winds that wilted Better structures framed from punctual plans that silted us Dams unbroken we flowed …leaving trembling shack of dreams Clutched tightly in mirthless mothers’ unyielding hands.