Moon Honey
Jedediah Smith

IMAGE: Cherisse Alcantara
Everywhere, sooner than later, there will be a hint of honey
On the bread box to start, where insomnia takes me to feed my hunger for sleep
On the jar made mosaic by fresh drips, still molten, and old drops petrified to amber crystals
preserving memories of past nights
On the table and on the counter and on the shambling muttering path between, which I must
navigate by stubbed toes and muffled grunts
On the couch where hints of gold hide among swirls of upholstery pattern until weeks of
adhered grime draw them to black
On the radio buttons I use to lose myself in soft music or the ramblings of fellow night walkers
On the bed I return to in optimism, my hairy legs speckled with droplets that smear the sheet and comforter to uncomfortable stickiness that makes me fidget and rouse
On the butter knife
the last one out of the suds of the dishpan
On the dog’s head while he begs beneath the honey-holding hand that feeds
On the cat who is glad I’m up to love her more, when she rubs against me, because honey can hit
even a moving target and
Although honey mucks the floors and summons the ants and delights the flies and
Although I am under the punches of enough sleeping pills to hit the mat a few times, down but
not out and
Although my sense of balance is dopey, dozy, and sluggish enough that I tip and tilt the slice of
bread slathered with honey like a drunken waiter threatening a dozen laps with his
overloaded platter of plates and
Although almost any late-night snack would be more reasonable and less Chaplinesque and
Although the sugar in the honey is most likely to make me twitch into further wakefulness,
Reason can never compete with sweetness.
For even in daylight, my feelings are nearly reverential for honey, nature’s most perfect
accomplishment
For the bees gather secretions from plants and flowers, but also from insects, a secretion we call
honeydew and Hebraic scribes called manna and described as a fine, flake-like thing
For it is in fact plant sap tapped and siphoned with such hungry vigor by an aphid it spews out its
anus to be slurped up by bees
For vomiting later into combs, to then be slurped up and vomited again, a nausea of recurrence
(although even the circadian bees obey the call of sleep)
For a secret enzymatic alchemy to spin swill and sunlight into pure gold, an impossible smelting of treasure from dross
For which we must do homage to the bug that brings sweetness to us
For humans’ best efforts at secretion is snot and while sleep is sweet, we wake to a world that is
not, that cries out for honey, even if it is dripped and drizzled and mizzled on every
armchair and couch and steering wheel and keyboard and spouse’s smartphone (forgive
me, it was so sweet)
For every surface made sticky will speak to us with a smacking sound when we lift our shoe or
hand, will hold onto us, cling to us, as if for once the world loves us back just a little and
sweetly
