HONEY FROM MUDGEE
Mudgee, New South Wales,
unplanned overnight on the way
to northern rainforests.
Nearby road stop sold unmarked honey
in homely jars, $3 scrawled in shaky pen
onto silver lids.
Bought one on the last day of the year,
opened it at home in early February.
To the nose, sunburnt hills,
to the eyes, viscous amber.
Carmel on the tongue, not sweet as tupulo,
less tart than Oregon wildflower.
Mudgee honey, your floral source unknown –
sunshine wattle, waratah, bottlebrush?
Bee labor and currawong birdsongs
made you what you are, taste worth waiting for.
And now, drastic news for bee colonies –
populations decline by more than half
on both American coasts, in Europe and the UK,
navigation deranged by cellphones
or engineered crops, who can say?
This very morning,
among lavender blossoms
just one bee working.
Striped crop insurer,
may you outsmart every threat,
for what’s a world without honey?
Claudia Lapp
4/27/2007
(from The Fires From Her Window, Six Chairs Press, 2008)
Mudgee, New South Wales,
unplanned overnight on the way
to northern rainforests.
Nearby road stop sold unmarked honey
in homely jars, $3 scrawled in shaky pen
onto silver lids.
Bought one on the last day of the year,
opened it at home in early February.
To the nose, sunburnt hills,
to the eyes, viscous amber.
Carmel on the tongue, not sweet as tupulo,
less tart than Oregon wildflower.
Mudgee honey, your floral source unknown –
sunshine wattle, waratah, bottlebrush?
Bee labor and currawong birdsongs
made you what you are, taste worth waiting for.
And now, drastic news for bee colonies –
populations decline by more than half
on both American coasts, in Europe and the UK,
navigation deranged by cellphones
or engineered crops, who can say?
This very morning,
among lavender blossoms
just one bee working.
Striped crop insurer,
may you outsmart every threat,
for what’s a world without honey?
Claudia Lapp
4/27/2007
(from The Fires From Her Window, Six Chairs Press, 2008)