Cinnamon and Honey

after living with the whaling rhetoric of New Bedford all day

I sit by the canal and watch the reflections ripple off the surface

trying to remember something of the wedding with the water

the wind picks up slightly and with a brush

pushes the current and makes it harder for the wasps

as they hover over the table and flirt with the lip

of an uncapped bottle of apfel schorle

from which I have drank but three times nigh

in one instant of stillness one of the wasps lands

on the crystal lip of the bottle and sucks at the nectar

but in defense a sudden gust of wind it travels down

into the neck and dives into the bubbling amber liquid

swallowed in an appled eddy

like Pete's father when he was just sixteen

or my friendship with Jonah

and ends up drowned and dead but

I say this unto thee

an orgasmic death is not a death at all