Honeybee Crawling on the Ode

Roger Camp

This canvas lounge

contains my lizard legs

basking in the sun.

In my dreams

for ever panting

for ever young.

A sylvan suburb

no substitute

for great works

as a drone bumbles

across the page

of on a Grecian Urn.

Legs tumescent with pollen,

it tracks golden sex

on marmoreal men

and maidens equally.

When this stumblebum

beelines to visit

other than Attic shapes

its legs bear home gold,

gold barelegged to comb.

Roger Camp lives in Seal Beach, CA, USA where he muses over his orchids, walks the pier, plays blues piano and spends afternoons reading under an Angel's Trumpet with a charm of hummingbirds. When he's not at home, he's photographing in the Old World. His work has appeared in Pank, Rust+Moth, Gulf Coast, Southern Poetry Review and Nimrod.