w i n t e r
47 days
The museum crowd leans close to the glass.
They watch huge centipedes and leaf bugs from New Guinea. They keep their eyes on the hissing roaches and ants and spiders. Brown Recluse. Wolf. Black Widow. Bird Eating spider, big as a plate.
Kids point timidly at the glass while standing behind the legs of Mom and Dad.
Noses run. Folks sneeze on the case surrounding the Hope diamond as it rotates inside.
There can come a time when it's all too much.
When you can't take one piece of mangnificence in for all the amazing things around it. They drown each other out. A twenty carat diamond doesn't look like much next to a 35 carat emerald in a room full of precious stones.
The rarest leaf bug in the world doesn't really stir the imagination when placed next to a whip scorpion.
Over by the window there is a small square opening and a clear plastic tube.
A lucite box above the opening contains the dried remains of a worker, a drone, and a queen bee.
Outside and in the tube small workers move about. Just on the other side of the glass they navigate the cold D.C. weather. Somewhere in the snow and ice they find what they need and return. For the 47 days it's alive the worker bee comes and goes.
While the museum crowd leans close to the glass.
goodnight 1.24.00