The Honey Gatherer

 

Gathered Honey

 

 

 

 

I stay my hand, laying aside the turmoil of day,

hearing secret messages of night and time

rotate, in spheres of silence.

Voices that have no voice

save the turning of my mind,

inaudible to my ear yet burning,

heard only deep inside.

 

Essence, distilling

to fuel the coming day

from vapours of the past.

Diary, journal, beyond the transient limits

of mere words.

More perhaps, eternal -

or nearly so, drawing on time’s

experience -

man’s impulse to survive, that placed

the not yet swollen hand

of earth’s first honey-gatherer

into the world’s first hive.

 

 

            John L. Berry – circa 1985

Reviews

[Margaret Barton-Wahl]

An interesting poem in verse and form. With a unique perspective on the world around you. Your phraseology paints poetic pictures in the mind of voice with out sound and gathering honey in anticipation of the swollen pain. I like it. Margaret Barton-Wahl

[JohnL]

It is really rather unfair of me to use the honeygatherer, as it is from a book which has probably not been read by that many people, The Source - James Mitchener. It is a wonderful novel based on fact, centred round an archeological dig in Israel which reaches back right into pre-history. Hence the honeygatherer - food on the hoof as it were, enduring the pain of bee stings to survive. The poem speaks of the experience that has accumulated in man from earliest times which togather with his natural instincts have helped him to stay alive and develop through the millennia. 'Voices that have no voice' are these instincts distilled from experience but not learned in any academy. An integral diary beyond mere words.
The book takes us from pre history right through to the Exodus of Jews out of post WW2 Europe and the settling of Israel - indeed the foundation of the State under David Ben Gurion after whom Tel Aviv Airport is named. One of the delights of the book is the way it portrays some of the ancient Old Testament events and you are some way in before you realise that they are well known events viewed from a secular angle.

[Spat Queen]

If I were you I would make a note to introduce the piece that states that this a referrence to a book called The Source. People who haven't read the book may be at a loss.