The Bee's Knees

It's passing strange; I never liked bees very much. --thought them ugly, mean and hazardous. But now they disappear, together with the crops dependent on them to survive. My sentiments have crossed the battlefield and joined a more quixotic enemy--one who feeds me first, then falls away to sacrifice his sting, his life, and his creative sweetness. I cannot celebrate. Belatedly it is the Charleston I hear that echoes that ironic requiem my brothers sang and danced to-- that burlesque of rhyme that mocked our noble insect friend. (We didn't know just what we do!) We and our "beekeepers" made a travesty of enterprise to raid the hives and carry off the fruits of all the buzzing, patient labor from the little guys who wanted just to leave a happy nursery before they died. It seems the lords above the hives don't keep them very well at all. The makers of insecticides still forge ahead in competition with themselves, their killing wares more perfect each successive year while in another room they play with genes to introduce a super flower; how sweet! Such are the blessings of democracy. OUr fuzzy friends still fall upon their hairy knees, then rise to buzz a hymn of thanks to all the plutocratic giants enabled by the ballot boxes, spilling out their "yes" to corporate power. Or do you question that? ~