The Honey Alone

Bees come from out of the sun, God’s fevered eye. Any simple child can see. Tears are gifts from the mother of God, as are memory and imagination, as are seeing, hearing, breathing, thinking, and feeling. There’s nothing but gifts on this poor earth. But only the wise child realizes, after drowsing among the flowers, wasting an entire summer of his best hours, the bees are his earliest ancestors, and he is their honey-loving, venom-bearing, six-sided-dreaming, I Ching–reciting descendant and fellow minion of the sun, he with his pollen-dusted eyelashes and skullcap, he with his maps legible only to other murmuring, winged, round-bellied alchemists. As for the wicked child who can’t remember what Virgil said about the vanishing of the bees, he may have to witness sweetness disappear from the earth in his lifetime and never know why. And what about the child who doesn’t even know what questions to ask? Tell him bees feed on sweat running down the ribs and inner arms and thighs of the mother of God, and on Her tears, to make the honey which alone satisfies the daily hunger of God. Tell him, Her tears are for us to cry.