Organics

I was today years old when I learned  
some desserts listing artificial vanilla 
as one of their ingredients may once
have been flavored by castoreum—
a yellow ochre substance produced 
in beavers' castor sacs, located between 
their pelvis and anus. Apparently, castoruem 
once lent sugared strawberry tones to ice cream, 
even a leathery musk to perfume. Emollients
and unguents, all the applications that,
like pheromones, lure the bees to the honey
in the hive and lips to the coolly glistening 
throat—we've always favored the sweet
over the burnt and bitter, the lustrous more 
than the pelted hide. We plunge pupae 
of mulberry silkworms into boiling water 
to unravel their cocoons into thread.