Honey is made in geometric heaven inside a white box guarded by vines, lids, veils, smoke, and stings. Honeybees make the melons plump and pump the cucumbers full of life. They work in secret during our summers of playground fights and sprinklers and juice boxes. While the people are starving, the bees fly over the walls of Babylon with life and healing in their chrome wings. Bees are in the graveyards and by the ocean and in the blue still air, whispering.

They land on our apple and orange blossoms. A single bee expends his fragile life in making one twelfth a teaspoon of honey, which we absently gulp down, never thinking it cost a life. Imagine living for a tiny speck of honey. Bees are brave. Through our hot and sultry summers, brave bees fill their combs with fresh and dark yellow sticky delight. They store up their food and with small sighs go out for more—and only get swats for all their hard and endless work.

The bees light our candles, sweeten our biscuits, soften our skin and hair, ripen our spirits, pollenate our hearts with tenderness, and make the children’s faces light with happiness as they play with the bear-shaped jar.