I leave them stores for the winter,
gallons of honey and a thousand
golden pockets of pollen
gleaming in the dark of the hive
nourishing the workers
through the long cold.
But then I take my due,
the honey supers so heavy
my knees begin to buckle.
Sweetness is a heavy load
pulling at my gut. It’s easier
to cut it with sour—goat cheese
or ricotta—a balance against
the sting of the nectar.
But I’m old enough to take it straight
when I want it, like the time
you surprise kissed me on the mouth
and we found new worlds of honey.
At home, I slice open the cells
and spin the honey out,
an aureate ribbon piling up on itself,
spun through with light and air.
The smell is rich insect life
and potential, stretching out over eons,
eternal and real, and I fill my cup to the brim.
Sara Eddy is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Tell the Bees (A3 Press, 2019) and Full Mouth (Finishing Line, 2020), along with a book of ekphrastic poetry written in collaboration with the photographer Dominique Thiebaut. She has published widely in literary journals: some of her poems have appeared recently in Threepenny Review, South85, Raleigh Review, and Ekphrastic Review. She is Assistant Director of the writing center at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, and works in close collaboration with the librarians in the special collections at Neilson Library, especially on collections centered on consumerism, food & cookbooks, poetry, and beekeeping. She maintains her own collection of vintage cookbooks for use by food writing students at Smith. She lives in nearby Amherst with a teenager, a black cat, and a white dog.