Tag: hornet

…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”

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”

Over the years, we have had basketball-sized paper bald-faced hornet nests appear in various places on the farm. They hang from eaves or branches undisturbed as their busy citizens visit our picnics, greedily buzz our compost bin, shoot bullet-like out of the garbage can when I lift the lid.  In short, their threat of using their weaponry control our moves during the summer. This year’s nest has been built to include some Golden Delicious apples in our apple tree.

This nest is the hornets’ nighttime respite for a few more weeks before a freeze renders them weak and paralyzed in slow motion.  This thing of unparalleled beauty on the outside harbors plenty of danger inside. I will not touch this fragile tissue-paper fortress with its beating buzzing hornet heart.

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

In a few short weeks, as the hornets 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 and broken.

Only then, its secret heart will be revealed and all that stings will be let go.