American Honey

  I heard a song today as I scooted the hangers from right to left at the thrift store. It was "American Honey". My Neice, Gabrielle, was with me and had decided to skip prom so I decided she needed to skip school and go to the thrift store with my Mom and Me.  I have a friend that calls things like that "therapy". It was one of the first warm days of Spring. The pear trees were in bloom and the bees were appreciative. I was thinking about the people I have known in my past life before the coma went out of my income and I had to go back to having a real job for which I am grateful.

  I thought about that American Honey. When I left a corporate job to don the smoker and gloves and veil and the rake and hoe and shovel.

  I sat on the ground beneath the cottonwoods as the blossoms sailed to the ground around us. I sat at the feet of one of my beekeeping buddies, Ivory Darnell. Nobody was really sure how old he was, including himself, because when Ivory was born nobody gave out birth certificates. I sat at his feet and listened as he told me stories about his Mother, the Original Alabama Bee Charmer, with her white bonnet, smoking rag and bee "gums" near her clothes line. "Those mean German bees" as he refered to them. No one could go close to them but her. When they first put a man on the moon he told me what his Grandpa said... "Well, they'll not put one on the Sun".

  My Friend got blowed away by an F5 years ago. He didn't have any legs by then. We helped each other. I was his legs in the bee yard and he kept the smoker alive with mounds of cool white billows.
Moments like that made me glad... glad that I choose the life I did....or did it choose me

...of American Honey.