Marrow & Mead (version 2)

Intro

Smoke curled slow past the chicken wire fence,

Bees hummed a hymn that made the hurt make sense.

She said honey ain't sweet till the sting's already paid,

Every legend that I know was born up in that shade.

Verse

Grandma kept twelve hives behind the tobacco shed,

Smoker in her left hand, veil pulled over her head.

Winter of forty-nine, the wells had turned to stone,

She melted river ice for water, boiled bone to bone.

Marrow rose like fat clouds on the surface of the pot,

Said the poor man's stew was richer than the rich man's plot.

Stingers left her knuckles swole like knots in old oak wood,

She never wore no gloves, said the bees know who is good.

Traded jars of mead for coal when the church bell wouldn't ring,

Traded jars for medicine when my mother caught the flu in spring.

Combed the wax by candlelight, sealed it up in tin,

Said the hive don't die from winter, dies from careless kin.

Buried three husbands, kept the fourth alive on broth and prayer,

Said the sweetness in the jar was proof that God still cared.

I was seven, watched her strain the comb through cheesecloth thin,

Said "boy remember this" — that's the war I was born within.

Chorus

Marrow for the winter, mead for the wound,

She boiled down the bone while the bees kept in tune.

Sting is just a lesson wearing honey for a crown,

Marrow keep you standin' when the frost tries to drown.

Verse

Now I keep receipts stead of frames inside a box,

Count the wounds like winters, watch the calendar clock.

Kitchen table steady with a pot of oxtail bone,

Momma taught me marrow when the fridge was always prone

To empty out by Thursday, check ain't come since Tuesday last,

Learned to make a feast from what the pantry couldn't cast.

Streets don't sting like bees do, streets bite deeper than the skin,

Every scar I carry is a debt I had to win.

Sold my old man's toolbox just to keep the heat turned on,

Kept his leather gloves though,