Tag: sting

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…