i adore the nostalgia of it... being russian myself (and a russian emigrant, no less) i am prone to nostalgia and sad little family stories laden with bitter-sweet, simple but o-so-meaningful detail.

thanks for these few minutes of warm heartache.

Beautiful, as always. I particularly like the image of the beekeepers going into hibernation- the subtle picture of the man being the same as the insect seems quiet and abstractly vivid at the same time.

And I've always been fond of poems or pieces of writing that focus around honey, for some reason. There seem to be so few of them these days.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful: "Each Christmas, I walk out to the East Bay/ With the honey bear and squeeze some in the/ Black water, always hoping that it will/ Float the rest of the way to the ocean,/ But it disappears instead into the depths."