Category: wasp nest

Trying to Transplant Pain

barnstormingblog1 Comment

Why should I have to deal with so-called human beings
when I can be up on the roof
hammering shingles harder than necessary,

driving the sharp nails down
into the forehead of the house
like words I failed earlier to say?

And when a few wasps eddy up
from their hidden place beneath the eaves
to zoom in angry agitation near my face

I just raise a canister of lethal spray
and shoot them down without a thought.
Don’t speak to me, please,
about clarity and proportionate response.

The world is a can of contents under pressure;
a human being should have a warning label on the side
that says: Disorganized Narrative Inside;
Beware of frequent sideways bursting

of one feeling through another
—to stare into the tangled midst of which
would make you as sick and dizzy as those wasps,

then leave you stranded on the roof
on a beautiful day in autumn
with a mouth full of nails,

trying to transplant pain
by hammering down
into a house full of echoes.
~Tony Hoagland “Wasp”

Two aerial tigers,
Striped in ebony and gold
And resonantly, savagely a-hum,
Have lately come
To my mailbox’s metal hold
And thought
With paper and with mud
Therein to build
Their insubstantial and their only home.
Neither the sore displeasure
Of the U. S. Mail
Nor all my threats and warnings
Will avail
To turn them from their hummed devotions.
And I think
They know my strength,
Can gauge
The danger of their work:
One blow could crush them
And their nest; and I am not their friend.
And yet they seem
Too deeply and too fiercely occupied
To bother to attend.
Perhaps they sense
I’ll never deal the blow,
For, though I am not in nor of them,
Still I think I know
What it is like to live
In an alien and gigantic universe, a stranger,
Building the fragile citadels of love
On the edge of danger.
~James L. Rosenberg “The Wasps’ Nest”

When will we ever learn?

This election season is unprecedented with plenty of verbal kicking of various hornets’ nests, some while resting in our literal laps.

We are surrounded on every side by anger and agitation, some of it coming from our own words and activities. Some of us feel like we are precariously balanced between family members and friends, hoping not to make things worse by saying what we believe, or choosing silence.

Rather than throwing stones or spraying poison at yet another wasp nest, I walk on by, acknowledging its fragile presence, but uninterested in joining its buzz.

As the walls of this seasonal fortress are tissue-paper thin, it won’t survive the winds and rains of the coming winter. There will always be attempts at rebuilding and still I will try to avoid the agitation.

I’m not in or of them.
It’s a long time passing…

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Harboring a Hornet’s Nest

barnstormingblog4 Comments

With bees, it isn’t the sting itself
but the unprovoked attack
that lingers.

How unfair to walk unwary, barefoot
on hot concrete, simply
pleasuring your feet,
or stepping down on a beach towel
only to be assaulted by the small plot
of something you meant no harm to.

That first pain is learned the hard way:
at five, you call
all-y, all-y, all come free
singing blind into a hive
hidden in the swing-set’s pole, then fall
what seemed the longest
fall; a cloud of bees flowered from your lips.

And later, put to bed with ice
and ointments melting over
the welts that covered you,
there was no explaining the bees’
behavior, no way to comprehend the reason
in their rage. You may never understand
this: the will behind the stinger,
a certain, fatal anger to survive.
~Erin Belieu “Bee Sting”

George got stung by a bee and said,
“I wouldn’t have got stung if I’d stayed in bed.”

Fred got stung and we heard him roar,
“What am I being punished for?”

Lew got stung and we heard him say,
“I learned somethin’ about bees today.”
~Shel Silverstein “Three Stings”

Ever have one of those days when it doesn’t really matter what you do, what you don’t do, what you say, what you don’t say—you find yourself sitting on top of a hornet’s nest, and at the slightest provocation, you’ll get nailed, but good.

The hardest reality of all is that you may have actually invited and fostered the hornets that are now ready to attack you. You offered them shelter, a safe haven, a place to come home to and what happens in return? You’re stung because you just happened to be there, perched in a precarious position.

What difficult lessons life tosses at us sometimes. And this little drama happened in my own backyard.

As I headed to the barn for chores and walked past our happy little gnome, I gave him my usual smile, wave and morning greeting, but something was different about him and I looked a little closer. 

He suddenly was appearing anatomically correct. What the heck?

And the look on his face had taken on a distinctly worried cast. How had he gotten himself into this predicament of harboring a hornet’s nest in his lap?

My little backyard friend was in a dilemma, pleading with his eyes to be saved from his agony. So I planned out a stealth rescue mission. Without warning, in the dark of night, I decided I could turn a hose on that nest, sweep it to the ground and crush it, hornets and all – a “take no prisoners” approach to my gnome held hornet-hostage. Then, every time I glanced at his gracious cheerful face I could smile too, knowing I had helped rescue him by eliminating the enemy. I could be the hero of the story…

Postscript:

I didn’t execute the “save our gnome”  rescue mission soon enough.  While I was foolish enough to mow the grass near the swing set, the offending hornet nailed me in the neck.  I walked right into it, forgetting there was a hornet hazard over my head.  One ice bag and benedryl later, I dispatched hornet and nest to the great beyond. 

It was my own fault for violating a hornet’s space, but it was the hornet’s fault for violating my friend’s lap. We’re even now. And my gnome is smiling in grateful relief.

photo by Tomomi Gibson
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Tomorrows Less Long

barnstormingblog2 Comments

Let me enjoy
this late-summer day of my heart
while the leaves are still green
and I won’t look so close
as to see that first tint
of pale yellow slowly creep in.
I will cease endless running
and then look to the sky
ask the sun to embrace me
and then hope she won’t tell
of tomorrows less long than today.
Let me spend just this time
in the slow-cooling glow
of warm afternoon light
and I’d think
I will still have the strength
for just one more
last fling of my heart.
– Jonathan Bohrn, Late August

August rushes by like desert rainfall,
A flood of frenzied upheaval,
Expected,
But still catching me unprepared.
Like a match flame
Bursting on the scene,
Heat and haze of crimson sunsets.
Like a dream
Of moon and dark barely recalled,
A moment,
Shadows caught in a blink.
Like a quick kiss;
One wishes for more
But it suddenly turns to leave,
Dragging summer away.
–  Elizabeth Maua Taylor, August  

I’m in the time of life when what is to come is ever so much shorter than what has been. I muse now at my sudden revelation as a five year old that a time would come when I would cease to be on this earth. I had no idea how soon that would come or whether I would have many years to think about how I might come to an end. That knowledge has colored all my days, knowing they are numbered and finite.

Now, like the drying leaves, I watch my edges curling and changing color in preparation – a kind of beauty preceding an eventual letting go.

I remember thinking, in my kindergarten-size brain, that I could not waste a minute of this life and needed to pay attention to everything. That has been much harder than I imagined: there is pain in attending to wars and famine, illness and injury, tragedy and tribulation. I was given my ears to hear, my eyes to see, my mouth to speak – for good reason. Though my heart hurts to read headlines, I must fling it into the messiness around me.

Even the leaves bleed red as tomorrow is less long.

It is the waning light and shortening days that colors my view like smoky haze in the sky painting a sunset deep orange.  The coming darkness is temporary and, like me, is inevitably finite; it will never conquer the light that is everlasting.

More Barnstorming photography and poetry from Lois Edstrom can be ordered in this book available here:

It’s Time for Swinging to be Done

barnstormingblog1 Comment

The porch swing hangs fixed in a morning sun
that bleaches its gray slats, its flowered cushion
whose flowers have faded, like those of summer,
and a small brown spider has hung out her web
on a line between porch post and chain
so that no one may swing without breaking it.
She is saying it’s time that the swinging were done with,
time that the creaking and pinging and popping
that sang through the ceiling were past,
time now for the soft vibrations of moths,
the wasp tapping each board for an entrance,
the cool dewdrops to brush from her work
every morning, one world at a time.
~Ted Kooser “Porch Swing in September” from Flying at Night

It is hard to just let go and let life move on, as it will do on this day’s transition to autumn, whether with us or without us.

We build our little lives so carefully; we plan and choreograph and anticipate, and all it takes is a creaky swing (or a measly little virus) to pull it to shreds.

So we rebuild, strand by strand, in the conviction that we still belong here even when everything around us is changing and will pay no attention to how we’re left hanging.

We keep trying.
We keep believing.
We keep wanting to make the world a little more beautiful.

Whirling in Circles

barnstormingblog2 Comments

yinandyang

 

kittensjuly27172

 

waspnest11

 

Now all the doors and windows
are open, and we move so easily
through the rooms. Cats roll
on the sunny rugs, and a clumsy wasp
climbs the pane, pausing
to rub a leg over her head.

All around physical life reconvenes.
The molecules of our bodies must love
to exist: they whirl in circles
and seem to begrudge us nothing.
Heat, Horatio, heat makes them
put this antic disposition on!

This year’s brown spider
sways over the door as I come
and go. A single poppy shouts
from the far field, and the crow,
beyond alarm, goes right on
pulling up the corn.
~Jane Kenyon, “Philosophy in Warm Weather” from Otherwise

 

web1

 

spiderdrizzle

 

Whether weather is very or very cold, so go our molecules — indeed our very atoms are constantly awhirl to keep us upright whenever we sweat or shiver.

This summer my doors and windows have been flung wide open; I’m seeing and hearing and feeling all that I can absorb, never to forget the gift of being human witness to it all.

Like a dog trying to catch its tail, I’m whirling in circles, trying to grab what will always elude me.

 

frillypoppy

 

sunsetcornfield

 

homermaple

 

homerroll2

A Secret Heart Broken

barnstormingblog2 Comments

nest2

 

wasphive5

 

…And I think
They know my strength,
Can gauge
The danger of their work:
One blow could crush them
And their nest; and I am not their friend.

And yet they seem
Too deeply and too fiercely occupied
To bother to attend.
Perhaps they sense
I’ll never deal the blow,
For, though I am not in nor of them,
Still I think I know
What it is like to live
In an alien and gigantic universe, a stranger,
Building the fragile citadels of love
On the edge of danger.
~James Rosenberg from “The Wasps’ Nest”

 

wasphive2

 

Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp’s nest.
~Pope Paul VI

waspnest

The nest was hanging like the richest fruit
against the sun. I took the nest
and with it came the heart, and in my hand
the kingdom and the queen, frail surfaces,
rested for a moment. Then the drones
awoke and did their painful business.
I let the city drop upon the stones.

It split to its deep palaces and combs.

The secret heart was broken suddenly.
~Michael Schmidt — “Wasps’ Nest”
waspnest2

It hung undisturbed the past few months as its busy citizens visited our picnics, greedily buzzed our compost bin, shot bullet-like out of the garbage can when I lifted the lid.  In short, their threat of using their weaponry controlled all our moves this summer.

This nest is their nighttime respite for a few more weeks before a freeze renders them weak and paralyzed in slow motion.  A thing of beauty outside harbors danger inside. I must not touch this tissue paper football nest with its beating buzzing hornet heart.

Let winter deal the devastating blow. As I am not in or of them, I cannot cast the first stone.

In a few short weeks, as they sleep, the north winds will tear it free from its tight hold,
bear it aloft in its lightness of being, and it will fall, crushed, broken, its secret heart revealed and all that stings will be let go.

 

 

waspnest11

 

waspnest10

A Fragile Citadel

barnstormingblog1 Comment

nest2…And I think
They know my strength,
Can gauge
The danger of their work:
One blow could crush them
And their nest; and I am not their friend.

And yet they seem
Too deeply and too fiercely occupied
To bother to attend.
Perhaps they sense
I’ll never deal the blow,
For, though I am not in nor of them,
Still I think I know
What it is like to live
In an alien and gigantic universe, a stranger,
Building the fragile citadels of love
On the edge of danger.
~James Rosenberg from “The Wasps’ Nest”

It hangs undisturbed from the eastern eave of the old milk shed, away from view from the house but its busy citizens visit our picnics, greedily buzz our compost bin, shoot bullet-like out of the garbage can when I lift the lid.  This nest is their nighttime respite for a few more months before a freeze renders the them to slow motion.   Winter hibernation will be a tenuous business for this paper home, as it faces battering from northeasters, likely to be soaked, torn and shredded in the harsh winds.

Yet for now, their fierce hold to security will remain undisturbed.  Let the winter deal the blow.

As I am not in or of them, I cannot cast the first stone.
Still I think I know what it is like to be hanging there waiting. hornetnest1

Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp’s nest.
~Pope Paul VI