DIVERSITY
by Robin Pultz Brooks

Each child was running about the field gathering their favorite flowers.
One called me over to see the bright orange poppies.
While another excitedly showed me the simply daisy.
There was one little boy, who would only collect snapdragons.
Each considering the other flowers, unworthy of their attention.

On the edge of the field stood a little girl, in a simple handmade dress, which had been patched many times.
I had never noticed her before or the quiet air that surrounded her.
Seeking to discover why she didn’t join in, I went to her side.
She looked up at me, with her sad brown eyes her face encircled by her golden locks.
I asked her what was wrong and she looked out to the field, full of children gathering their treasured flowers.
While bees flittered about, gathering the pollen from the flowers, before they could be picked.

“It is wrong to separate them.” She softly whispered.

I didn’t understand her words and looked again at the field.
I found that the beauty of the wild flowers was in their random dispersment.
That each area where the children had been gathering, was now empty.
Barren of the beauty that was once there.

Soon the children returned, their bright faces looking up at me, as each clutched their precious flowers.
Tears came to my eyes, for the beauty that had drawn me here was gone and with it the bees.
For they had moved on to other fields.

A child asked why I cried.

I couldn’t answer, how could I tell such tender young hearts that they had destroyed the beauty god had created, that his flowers were never meant to be separated but intermingled.
The scent and color of one, complimenting the other.
The pollen gathered by the bees was to create a honey worthy of kings, to feed the souls of the poor.
That when fall came, there would be no seeds for the winds to gather and paint the field anew.

I turned to return the children home, my heart heavier than it was that morning.
I looked for the child that had opened my eyes but she wasn’t there, instead there was a bright golden daisy with a bee sitting in its center, watching me.