HONEY - with passing apologies to Rupert Brooke..
Where do bees go in the winter my friend,
Where do the honey bees go ?
Wherever they hide, at summer's end
Only the honey bees know...
And where goes the honeybee's honey my friend
When the honeybees are gone ?
To the back of the fridge, till its sell-by date's end
Where it's lain, neglected, too long.
"Where's the honey?" you cry - "I was sure we had some"
Sealed and safe in a squat little jar
With the red-current jelly, posh mustard and jam
That's where the honey jars are !
So when the men return from over the sea.
Will their England perhaps have changed
And as Rupert Brooke once declaimed
Will some melliferous vestige yet remain ?
At ten to three, will there still be
In the summer heat and humidity
Beset by wasp and sweet-toothed midge
From the murky depths of the vicarage fridge
Honey, still, for tea ?
Rupert Brooke, handsome and sentimental war poet, is mostly remembered by the last two of the 150 lines of a rather long poem written in Berlin in 1912. He died towards the end of the war. Of a mosquito bite, in Greece.
© nigel hallworth 2021