Under the pear tree, sun-festered circles of windfall. and the wasps flicker under the ripe mash of summer. On the radio: a boy in Michigan walking his dog stumbles on a nest. The leash looped round a tree, they fall, covered. Both of them die. What is not said: that wasps have not only stingers, but mandibles or jaws, can bite again and again; how they are attracted to water, raw meat, fruit; have the ability to reason. There are ten thousand in a nest. And around my face they flare close as lit cigarettes. I move deliberately so they consider me not the fruit but the tree.
©Bruce Hunter, 1986 -- unauthorized duplication prohibited