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Barbara Bowen The Keeper The remains of mice—limp ornaments, a shrike’s calling card—still hang on the barbed wire fence. From my cellar door, I scrape greens, white, blues, grays, a century of hues. Which are lethal? What is it in me swings toward sadness, a compass tugged true north? I asked the gnostics to teach me. You must knock, they said, and not knuckle under. As a grouse flew up from the grass, the sunset behind it, I saw light through its wing. And this morning I watched honeybees swarm in a sycamore tree on Central Park South, a keeper appeared and gathered up the swarm into his arms. The Lily For Matt I wrap my fingertips around the lily’s rust-colored pollen pads and pluck them with a soft snap, they fall into my hand. All day the dye of ochre-colored germ stains my palm, in spite of soap, in spite of rubbing. I like it, as I once liked your stain upon my clothes, its smell on my skin, sometimes I didn’t wash. I was taught to take the lily’s anthers off, so they wouldn’t soil the tablecloth, the clothes of anyone whose passing brought her close enough to brush against the flower’s dye. Were we any less amazing than this lily, staining each other as we did?