Honey Wine

If poetry had a flavor, it would taste like mead. Real poetry, not the fluffy, white Zinfandel, Hallmark poetry.

Neruda's ink well may have been filled with mead. Rumi probably washed his feet in it. I'm not talking about just any mead either, but real, fine crafted honey mead, like the bottles from Fox Hill Meadery. This isn't the syrupy, teenage-basement-experiment mead. Their special reserve, made with local buckwheat honey and aged with oak, is (like some of the best balladry) heady, sultry, and intoxicating enough to get you into just the right amount of trouble.

Thanks to a friend who recently handed me a bottle, I have discovered the charity of honey coaxed to the very edge of its existence, lifted to heaven, bottled, and brought back to earth for the thirsty animals to swallow.