a poem for a dying thing

This poem is over a year old now. Happy birthday, poem. Today, I put some sunglasses on and there was a wasp crawling along their rim. I was glad.

Yellow Jacket Reprise

fourth wasp sting in three weeks

okay, i am listening

yellow tough

jacket love

and the cool green bitter soothe

as summer makes its last stand

take stock

step back

surveying

what has come to pass

and how and why

and if it was good or well

and what the cellar still needs.

this is the time we think to our future bellies

caring for our future selves like the most

delicate sprout coming out

of an acorn

this time reveals the delicateness of those oaken parts of ourselves

and the mightiness of our delicate places

in the yellowed shrivel of frost tipped fig i

see myself walking
through wingstem without end

in the relentless rains i’m made lazy and

clean and at peace and in motion and at rest.

pleasure and pain.

love and wasp.