Four-Word Lines
May Swenson
Your eyes are just
like bees, and I
feel like a flower.
Their brown power makes
a breeze go over
my skin. When your
lashes ride down and
rise like brown bees’
legs, your prolonged gaze
makes my eyes gauze.
I wish we were
in some shade and
no swarm of other
eyes to know that
I’m a flower breathing
bare, laid open to
your bees’ warm stare.
I’d let you wade
in me and seize
with your eager brown
bees’ power a sweet
glistening at my core.
from New and Selected Things Taking Place
This Frenzy 
Ah, May Swenson. She’s just the best, isn’t she?
Yes, she’s the best. When I launched into reading her, at Joan’s suggestion, I thought I didn’t know her work. Then I found “The Centaur,” a poem I read once, somewhere, and could retell image by image all these years later. May got it exactly absolutely right in that poem, how as a child I was both horse and rider when I played horse, freely switching from one to the other, inhabiting both bodies at the same time.