The All-Important Bee

The apple is a gift. If I were to paint the apple, I would need yellow, brown, pink, gold. White even. And black, to darken the shadow side. But to know the apple, I would have to take it in hand. Always, it is cold to the touch, slow to warm up. The apple, to really know it, must be tasted. The apple was meant to be eaten: in hand, on limb--even the windfallen: good food for the ant, for the worm, the field. This apple, I might have said only moments ago, means nothing to me. But now I see.

The apple was once a mystery, a potential in stem. And then a flower--deep, dark pink. Then came the bee, the all-important bee. The flower can't do much without the bee. Nor the grasshopper, without knees. The human, without a mouth, without teeth. Yet thoughtlessly, voices run on with throw-away speech. Restlessness makes of itself words that the restless people speak and then what?

Do you think about where it goes, what you toss in your bucket, your skins and cores? There is a connection I have lost, distracted by the refuse swirling about me. Loud men's voices mostly. A tempest of nothing, which becomes something of course because of its insistence coupled with my weakness.

Ah! And once they have passed…: the swirl is only grasshoppers now. Why, I wonder, is that so pleasant? What makes the apple substance, the grasshopper substance, the hawking crow substance, the gliding foot substance, and the gruff bustle of men refuse, refused?

Why do I refuse?

I have not forgotten the bee. The bee is the giver, you see. Without the bee, there is no gift. No apple lying in the basket. No stem, no blush, no bruise, no rust of a wound from a careless jostle. Nothing to ignore. Nothing to consume. No more honey for tea and scones.