Honey At Table

Duane Keiser

Honey At the Table




It fills you with the soft

essence of vanished flowers, it becomes

a trickle soft as a hair that you follow

from the honey pot over the table




and out the door and over the ground,

and all the while it thickens,




grows deeper and wilder, edged

with pine boughs and wet boulders,

pawprints of bobcat and bear, until




deep in the forest you

shuffle up some tree, you rip the bark,




you float into and swallow the dripping combs,

bits of the tree, crushed bees — a taste

composed of everything lost, in which everything

lost is found.


Mary Oliver

 "The soft essence of vanished flowers...thickens...grows deeper and wilder..."This is a transformation poem - flowers turn into honey, which in turn draws us into the forest and makes us wild and bearlike - and honey, honey is the golden ingredient of wonder. A  trickle of hope that perhaps after all nothing is lost, but is gathered and treasured and returned to us in a honey of moments and joys, a taste of Eden – wild, sweet, Home.



(Here's another great poem about honey.)