A lonely honeybee

I’m turning soil around the crown-of-thorn cactus. It has shed most of its leaves under the onslaught of cold in January. Its thorns look sturdier and more prominent now without the leaves. The thorns are impassive to weather—spring and autumn are the same, as are the winters and summers. However, even during the coldest overcast days, the hardy plant didn’t completely lose its smile. The thorns may carry the shades of conservatism and some tinkle of metallic weight on their pointed ends but the flowers have innate, vivid bond with the vibrant most spring somewhere in a distant, virginal vale. There are more flowers than the leaves; bright red little round flowers and silvery fangs of thorns—the defenders of beauty, or say the flowery son of god on the crucifix. They prove their status. They mean their job really well. I get a slight scratch at the back of my hand, not deep enough to draw blood, but strong enough to leave a scratch mark. Maybe they intend to prick me very softly.

There is a lone honeybee on a flower on the thorny plant. I hope it’s not a castaway or someone who has lost the way to the new home. Or maybe even too nostalgic one who hasn’t been able to leave the little yard of a lonesome writer, almost redundant and nameless himself, where there are some flowers and a few small trees. I see a few more honeybees. Are these few remaining honeybees the ones who were accidently left behind and now can’t make a way back to the new home?

Partings and relocations aren’t without their sad chimings altogether. But as they say, change is the perennial law. They have enough reasons in the survival book to move on. They are possessed with a free, itinerant spirit. They aren’t merely potted flowers at my mercy. They are alive and independent. I hope their dormant bond with my little garden will be revived. I look forward to their—the parent beehive—arrival during the monsoon season. I hope they will have plenty of cheerful, amusing travelogues to share with me through their buzzing wings once they arrive.