Adept at alchemy we change nectar
to richest light-filled gold for Queen,
her Kings and thirsty hive. Each day
we drink the syrup of yellow flowers,
blossoming apple, cherry, peach and
plum, a single mystery repeats itself:
Inside our domed colony tier on tier
of waxy six-sided cells brim for bees
asleep in hexagons until they wake to
nurse from sugar we leave for them.
We hurry back to groves on fire with
scarlet petals, white and pink whose
sweetness calls 10,000 pairs of wings
that earn no holiday or copper coin.
For free we give our flowing amber
that every tongue desires from birth,
our silky ore intoxicating as storied
pleasure, the golden taste of honey
Greek poet Homer in his “Odyssey”
describes as divine nectar of the gods
whispering “Ambrosia” as they raise
the jeweled goblets to impatient lips.
Nels Hanson has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Texas Review, Black Warrior Review, Southeast Review, Montreal Review, and other journals, and stories were nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2010 and 2012. Poems have appeared in Poetry Porch, Atticus Review, Red Booth Review, Meadowlands Review, Emerge Literary Review, Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine, and other magazines, and are in press at Oklahoma Review, Paradise Review, Hoot & Hare Review, Citron Review, and Poetry Porch.