The beekeeper arrived, unannounced on December 19, and harvested honey for us, leaving it in a big bucket for us to dispense into jars which Haiku Son and I duly did, Haiku Husband being away for a couple of days (he’d done it by himself last year).
As a two-person operation it all went quite smoothly – he operated the dispensing nozzle while I held the jars underneath and called ‘stop’. We finished with a couple of empty jars to spare, whew, and not too much sticky mess to clean up.
sunlit jar
the beekeeper’s gift
on the doorstep
– Carmen Sterba
The Heron’s Nest 3:6 (2001)
Photo: Sandra Simpson
on the honey
a slight scent of the forest —
lengthening daylight
– Tsugawa Eriko, tr Kato Koko
A Vast Sky: An anthology of contemporary world haiku (Tancho Press, 2015)
I spent a couple of days tasting the honey, trying to work out what it tasted of, if anything in particular, but no such luck. A bit of a fizz on the tongue, though, that’s about the best specific I can do.
Oh, yes, 10kg, same as last year!
honey bee –
at last the budding weeds
have meaning
– Ben Moeller-Gaa
Mystic Illuminations 3 (2016)
The bees are smoked to quieten them before the comb is removed. Photo: Sandra Simpson
on hold with the help desk a sound of bees swarming
– Sandra Simpson
Presence 51 (2014)
end of a love
honey hardens
in the jar
– Polona Oblak
Notes from the Gean 3:4 (2012)
Botan shibe fukaku wakeizuru hachi no nagori kana
A bee
staggers out
of the peony.
– Matsuo Basho, tr Robert Hass
Basho’s haiku originally from Skeleton in the Fields (Nozarashi kiko)
a travel journal of 1684-5
Another translation is:
from deep within
the peony pistils — withdrawing
regretfully the bee
