Honeysuckle

For scant weeks in spring when the ground has had time to get warmerand all the white flowers whose forms are so hard to imagine

are coming to bloom, and the air smells each day of some newness,a sweetness whose name, like the scent, flags the tip of the tongue

then leaves, leads me onward, leads bees on, leads moths, leads small flies(for who knows which beast every flower is meant to attract

and who can collect each one’s name?), I breathe in as much ofthe air as will flow through my lungs before—sudden, persistent—

you lower down over the piedmont, imparting a one-notedsweetness that has to content us all summer, for only

a rare other fragrance can cut through those curtains of sugar.