Wasp’s Nest

---

Gray sack, slowly deflating balloon. Where the wasps

have gone to, I haven’t a clue. I know nothing

about the world’s physicalities, the facts. I make things up,

draw pictures, play a game in my head. The nest fell.

Maybe I hit it with my broom. The other wasps are probably

looking down at me from a canopy of maples

on my walk, tracing invisible dotted lines down the hill

past the red house with a room shaped like a silo

built by a man who’s dead. His wife lives there alone,

and she isn’t eating well. I keep worrying

I should do something, but I don’t. Next to her

there’s the guy who’s always hosing down his driveway,

raking gravel out of his lawn. If we were in a fire

or on a sinking ship, I wouldn’t be the first person he’d save.

But if wasps were chasing me and I banged on his door

he’d open it. I’d stand on the mat

careful not to track in mud and we’d talk

about how terrible an angry wasp can be, and when it was safe

I’d leave. That would be our common ground,

like the wasps and me: no sting, just recognition.