Moonlight Snack

Honey butter is good on everything

The day travels a standard arc, pajamas to pajamas. The path is scattered with incentives—early-morning buttered toast, late-afternoon latte, midnight truffle.

But taste stays up after hours. I made this discovery one night when the agenda was full and the refrigerator empty. I was up packing for a trip, trying to download a novel, upload the laundry. Periodically I’d stop to check on the moon. It was supposed to do something—lurch, or go dim.

I looked through closets, looked at the sky, looked for a snack. Finally I settled for simple: honey on spoon. I stepped outside and, in the extra-dark dark, swallowed sunshine.

I might have assumed my 2 a.m. taste buds to be tired. Instead, I got an extraordinarily precise report. I could taste the honey: golden, faintly lemony. And sense the contributing flower: delicate, pale purple. And the on-duty bee: compact, earnest, and pensive.

As was I. Perhaps I missed many such flashes of enlightenment, letting the daily jumble execute a full eclipse.