Hail Honey Heartily! | Siva Mahendran

Could it be manna from heaven?
Dense, viscous, sweet and golden
A labour of love or a love of labour
Busy bees’ teamwork endeavour
Foraging forests,foliage,flowers
Chance culling choicest clusters
Consciously and subconsciously
Focused-sensing by, occidentally
Scavenging to gather together
Scattering far about the verdure
To return by instinct to their hives
Sunrise to sunset with no off days!

A product of bees’ arduous labour
Precious honey for us all to savour
Earth and sun’s energy combined
By flowering plants manufactured
Mother nature’s natural sweetener
Healthy food supplement for sure
For a healthy heart and skin glow
Eating a lot surely is bad though!
Liquid gold’s many health benefits
Unknown to animals and insects
Keeps them quite hale and hearty
And should help us too practically.

Sweet liquid with a golden hue
Syrupy enrichment like sugar too
Tastes nutty, fruity, woody, or floral
Honey in various flavours after all
In raw or refined nectar - varieties
Food of the God’s in the Vedas
Eating it is to absorb its essence
Feeling ever Almighty’s presence
The life-sap of the sun in Rig Veda
Quoted as long ago as a millennia
Honey’s akin to sweet love too
For mind, body and soul to renew!

Poet's note: I wrote this poem in October 2020. We have now switched to using honey as our choice of sweetener for beverages and food in general as a healthy alternative to plant based sugar or artificial sugar which may slowly harm us medically and physically in time. The poem aims to eulogies honey as a health giving food supplement and a natural way to keep diabetes at bay , which both my late father had and my mother suffers from now. I feel honey could be a god-given panacea for many of our medical problems and healthy living.