The Days Are Bees

by Pablo Neruda from Still Another Day

The days aren’t discarded or collected, they are bees
that burned with sweetness or maddened
the sting: the struggle continues,
the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of years doesn’t unweave: there is no net.
They don’t fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.
Sleep doesn’t divide life into halves,
or action, or silence, or honor:
life is like a stone, a single motion,
a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,
an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal
that climbs or descends burning in your bones.”

–I’m recovering from eye surgery, which has meant I am only able to read (and write), less than an hour a day, where before it was more like 8-10. In the meantime, I listen to podcasts and try to pass along things that mean something. The yeast is rising, though. Cheers.