JOY
by Julie Cadwallader-Staub
Who could need more proof than honey–
How the bees with such skill and purpose
enter flower after flower
sing their way home
to create and cap the new honey
just to get through the flowerless winter.
And how the bear with intention and cunning
raids the hive
shovels pawful after pawful into his happy mouth
bats away indignant bees
stumbles off in a stupor of satiation and stickiness.
And how we humans can’t resist its viscosity
its taste of clover and wind
its metaphorical power:
don’t we yearn for a land of milk and honey?
don’t we call our loved ones “honey?”
all because bees just do, over and over again, what they were made to do.
Oh, who could need more proof than honey
to know that our world
was meant to be
and
was meant to be
sweet?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Julie Cadawallader-Staub lives near Burlington, Vermont. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. Her first collection of poems, Face to Face, was published in 2010. “Joy” and” Guinea Pig,” which Garrison Keillor read on The Writer’s Almanac, are in this collection, in addition to sixty other poems. Julie’s poem Reverence has been anthologized in Garrison Keillor’s book Good Poems: American Places. Her poetry also appears in the Silver Birch Press Summer Anthology. Visit her at juliecspoetry.com.
Silver Birch Press 