The Honey Seller,1800 Poem by Sally Evans

Under the Castle gate
bringing my store to the kitchen
I am asked to wait.
Honey shines in crocks in my basket.

The gardener wants to know, he says,
if this is a bee-skep hole.
Can we keep bees in it?
He leads me round the old bowls green,

shows me a stone-cut shallow niche.
Am I expected to explain
this is no bee ledge, but a sconce
for a graven image? Dare I be the one

to point out an older, Catholic custom
where queens and kings, and those before them
followed religions no longer approved?
Time has taught the uses of silence.

I answer: grassy slopes favour the bees,
clover in fields, thyme in the stones,
the moors of heather and shrub myrtle.
Meanwhile, I would not fetch my subjects here,

for they are outside workers, like myself.
I bring their produce to your gate.
The kitchen pays me fairly, then
hands me last time's empty crocks -

He nods. On to your business then, he says.
Today I will not stop to gossip,
but flee downhill in daylight,
back to my far-flung bees.

2009