Honey Creeps

I can’t stop asking friends, acquaintances,

strangers in line at the grocery store,

but nobody seems to know the answer.

I might have to wait until spring,

when the farmers market unfurls its umbrella

of vegetable seedlings, cage-free eggs

on the tarmac behind the library.

It’s possible I’ll never know.

Maybe I’ll ask the guy who sold me

this hefty six pound jar of sugary, thick sunshine.

It’s possible he’ll know, but there’s no guarantee.

He’s just a beekeeper and strawberry grower,

awkward, not the easiest guy to talk to.

I may never figure it out.

Just because he gathered the honey

doesn’t mean he’ll be able to explain the physics

of why each night, despite my careful wiping away

of the day’s residue, it creeps up the inside walls

of the glass jar, how it insinuates itself between

glass rim and tin lid, each morning irksome glue,

each morning making me work just a bit harder

for the perfection in my oversized mug:

black Assam tea leaves, whole milk, golden nectar.

Like I doubt he – or anybody –

can explain to me why they sent her away,

14-year-old mother of one-year-old Sylvie

not the handsome, sweet-talking older cousin

who’d been pimping her for years.

The poet Rumi exhorts “don’t be the jar of water whose rim always stays dry.”

He wasn’t thinking of the slow upward sneak of honey.

He was thinking abundance, as in my cup runneth over!

He was thinking generosity, as in what’s mine is yours!

He wasn’t thinking they’d take his side, not hers.