It seems to me the good things come in whispers. Soft, like a breeze in a garden, making flowers nod their heads and bees hold on tight for the ride. Just a gentle nudge that says life, life, and more life. These things are good and simple.
Can a heavy boot come along and squash the flowers to the ground, grind the bees into the dirt? Sure. It’s not hard. A lawn mower could come and decapitate every one of those flowers. A bulldozer could rip up the land and turn it into a parking lot and none of those flowers or the bees would whimper a single audible protest.
It’s easy to smash down what is quietly sweet and possesses a fragile sort of power. So why do I sometimes imagine that my one voice might help tilt the world toward love and compassion? It’s too easy to destroy my voice, to destroy me. Power is a beast, a dragon, with cruel intentions. If sweet good things are in the way of power and money and corruption, we have few avenues to fight. And progress is painfully slow. Corruption is terrifyingly swift.
I still choose what is sweet and good and quiet because it is the only thing that soothes me. A million flower seeds will wait in that soil when the bulldozers drive away. One day, when the change of seasons has split the asphalt, the sprouts will seek sunlight and push their way through the cracks; gentle opportunists. Survivors, sweetly and silently triumphant.
And then the bees will come.
or 
cal armistead 