Most read ▸
* * *
a wasp on foot
the nervous trembling
of her wings
Poems on the topic: wasp
Poems on the topic “wasp” on Poets.by.
The Hollow (8)
under the green oaks
all the colors of flame
tupelo
too cold to move
the red eft shivers
when I stroke its back
I lift my eyes
to the hillside
dead and dying mountain laurel
a midnight-blue wasp
its white-tipped antennae
palpating the ground
Old field
Most of the goldenrods still standing
at winter’s end are topped
by the empty habitations of wasps.
Dried half-pods of milkweed
cluster three to a stalk,
a Baroque superfluity of arch and wing.
From the woods, a drumming grouse
reminds me what real wings can do—
that accelerating heartbeat.
Oak Apple Gall
Incidental planet, Biblical
metonym for bitterness,
a green anti-fruit filled with air
in citrus-like sections
& harboring a larva at its core.
The oak’s response to a bit
of foreign matter is not
unlike the oyster’s: wall it off
inside a solid tear-drop.
Come fall, it turns red
but doesn’t rot, lapsing instead
into tough brown paper,
a manuscript in the round
that whelps a wasp.
A Wasp
a wasp
circles the forgotten
dessert
calculating return
on investment
Terrified of Them
Terrified of them she was through long
Experience being swarmed with stings,
Running, her hands over eyes and mouth,
Running to the house or jumping in the lake,
In whatever way possible to stop the punishers.
For years, she made herself their nemesis
In revenge, setting nests afire! Or in
Evenings inverting a glass bowl upside
Down over their holes to watch them starve.
Only in recent years, as her ways have slowed,
Finding in books their part in the scheme of
Things as helpers in garden and orchard,
Has she learned to move more gently
Even as they light on her cidery hands,
Milking fingers for juice, never stinging.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
Or try: