Giant Hornets
A wen-smutted and oblong-sided apple
I picked from deep grass looked the best
of the lot, but its sour bite was not the flavor
of moral life William James said he savored
crunching into a tart russet from home.
I munched one chunk of this fallen fruit
then spit the bitter pulp out to bees nuzzling
goldenrod tassels. I could’ve lessoned
my tongue to accept bitterness, yet at my age
why risk running drizzles? Always a house
once stood where a copse of apple trees,
long neglected and crowded by overgrowth,
still drop anemic fruit for browsing deer,
and as I searched with desultory gaze
for its tell-tale mounds or hollows my eyes
froze in sudden focus on monstrous bees
like tigers the size of thumbs hunched
in fearsome symmetry and riding every apple
doming in the rank tangle where I stood.
If these bees be the giant Yak-killer hornets
of Japan, hatched out of busted crates
piled in back of box stores, then we’re done
with apple-kicking now, I wryly mused.
Trapped thus, I could discern a great oak,
die-backed limbs raised in stark impotence
to empty heavens that must’ve served
to shade the house. I would’ve returned,
once, with a spade to dig up the crap hole
and rummage for dumped bottles I sold
to shoppers who cherish old products
dead people used and threw away. I shook
my head to bury memory, and peering down
to tiptoe a zig-zag path through the mine
field of apples, I perceived more closely
that a bee throbbing in a mesmeric suck
upon the closest apple was not a killer of yaks
but in fact a look-alike cicada killer wasp
from the same picture book of bees, harmless
except for beady-eyed bugs that chime
in the high trees of summer. Gem shaped,
Japanese poets called them spirits and wrote
exquisite poems compact as jewels
in their honor. But these wasps I strode over
fearlessly stun cicadas with venom
too weak to bother yaks or men and drag them
to their burrows to feed their larvae
living meat that tastes, we might believe,
like morality in nature’s brute force to live,
though like all faith we can only believe
and say we taste such savor in familiar flavors.
I picked from deep grass looked the best
of the lot, but its sour bite was not the flavor
of moral life William James said he savored
crunching into a tart russet from home.
I munched one chunk of this fallen fruit
then spit the bitter pulp out to bees nuzzling
goldenrod tassels. I could’ve lessoned
my tongue to accept bitterness, yet at my age
why risk running drizzles? Always a house
once stood where a copse of apple trees,
long neglected and crowded by overgrowth,
still drop anemic fruit for browsing deer,
and as I searched with desultory gaze
for its tell-tale mounds or hollows my eyes
froze in sudden focus on monstrous bees
like tigers the size of thumbs hunched
in fearsome symmetry and riding every apple
doming in the rank tangle where I stood.
If these bees be the giant Yak-killer hornets
of Japan, hatched out of busted crates
piled in back of box stores, then we’re done
with apple-kicking now, I wryly mused.
Trapped thus, I could discern a great oak,
die-backed limbs raised in stark impotence
to empty heavens that must’ve served
to shade the house. I would’ve returned,
once, with a spade to dig up the crap hole
and rummage for dumped bottles I sold
to shoppers who cherish old products
dead people used and threw away. I shook
my head to bury memory, and peering down
to tiptoe a zig-zag path through the mine
field of apples, I perceived more closely
that a bee throbbing in a mesmeric suck
upon the closest apple was not a killer of yaks
but in fact a look-alike cicada killer wasp
from the same picture book of bees, harmless
except for beady-eyed bugs that chime
in the high trees of summer. Gem shaped,
Japanese poets called them spirits and wrote
exquisite poems compact as jewels
in their honor. But these wasps I strode over
fearlessly stun cicadas with venom
too weak to bother yaks or men and drag them
to their burrows to feed their larvae
living meat that tastes, we might believe,
like morality in nature’s brute force to live,
though like all faith we can only believe
and say we taste such savor in familiar flavors.
