Gold

 I’m transfixed by a pair of bees, not bees

searching for pollen, gold bees in the museum

at Heraklion, each with a leaf of wing and circle of eye

balancing the other. The beautiful segments 

of their abdomens curve until they conjoin

in copulation. The two nurse a drop of honey.

When I try to imagine the refined lady who lived

in painted rooms being robed, then adorned 

with the necklace on which this jewel hung

what I see is the gold that lay behind this gold— 

bowlfuls of fruit with matt green and glistening 

black skins, fruit which pleased the mouth 

or was pressed into lucent liquid, poured into 

amphorae taller than men and stored in the depths

of Minoan palaces, a gold which cooked food

and fed lamps, that cleansed sweating bodies

and cured the sick, a gold so valuable that scribes 

recorded it on tablets: the oil as a pair of rivering lines,

the crucial tree with its arms stretched out,

the plump fruit dominant on branches. No wonder

that Athena’s gift to the Greeks of olive trees 

was prized above Poseidon’s war horses. 

And I’m not surprised when the girl calls me

into her shop brimming with long-necked bottles

and soaps in wicker nests, softens my hands

with olive cream, when every restaurant owner 

greets us with gold: a gleaming smile, a dish of olives.