Crusader for the Bees

It was the first farmers market on the park blocks by PSU, a five minute walk from my city job. I needed to go to the market, to see my flower competition. Something I have been thinking about came to mind again when I saw the booth with all the honey. A woman sat in red behind baskets of tomatoes. Another market goer stood blockading the table of beeswax candles and pollen. I wanted in.

"Do you work here?" I asked him, doubtfully. His green eyes blazing "No, but I'll talk to you" he said.

"I want to know about the bees." I slid by him to stand in front of her, she looked out at me from behind the baskets, the scale at her finger tips. "What" she said.

"How are the bees?" without stopping I spit out "I mean, I'm reading articles from last year, but how are they now, is it getting better?"

"It never get better" she said thickly accenting each word "It always get worse". My eyes began to well in the cold of her spring booth, the cold of her face.

"My husband do the bees" she said "he never quit, how bad it gets but he never quit the bees."

"They were writing about it and talking about it before." I said

"They stop talking about it, they open a pandora's box and they close box because they see problem is too big, they push it back they can not face problem."

She is greek, with auburn hair blowing around her face. She's been on the planet I'm guessing six decades. She grows tomatoes.

"Do you see an end in sight?" I ask her, I beg her.

she lowers her head, then looks up at me. "no." her face, her voice, is flat.

I stare at the table of honey in jars, at pollen and bees wax candles. I imagine the man who will not give up on his bees. I buy a small bottle of honey and while she watches me I pull a tomato from the basket. She tells me what I owe her, and I throw in a pair of green bees wax candles.