Honey-Dew and Sooty-Mold

For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of paradise.

A financial planner advised us that, with medical advances,
people will soon live well past a hundred years,
so we’ll have to save even more for retirement—
a horrifying possibility for me,
as I retired four and a half years ago.

Greasy black veneer over everything—
sidewalks, deck boards, plants, lawn furniture—
we thought from oil combustion, but Robin
talked to an arborist at the State Fair,
and it turns out the veneer is sooty-mold,
a type of fungus that grows in honey-dew,
substance secreted by a variety of aphids
after they ingest plant sap.

It’s true that the sidewalk is almost black with it,
a bit tacky on the soles of my feet as I walk
outside at any time of day. The sooty-mold tinge
gives the whole yard an antiqued look—
if I removed it I’d damage the value—
especially dark on the stones of our little garden circle,
where you can see the insect damage
and the discoloration from the sooty-mold
on the leaves of an overhanging bush,
sticky as they are with the honey-dew the fungi drink.

And it brightens my whole outlook to know,
I walk barefoot every day in the leavings
of billions of invisibly tiny bugs,
their sweet dung inhabited by such dark accretion,
day by day more distinct, as if constituting
whatever is venerable about my days—
devouring the least fear
that I might live forever.