After the sting
I grow intolerant,
spray a deadly stream of Raid Killer 271.
Alien protein throbs my wrist,
my attacker lies in slimed earth.
But here, another paper wasp—
a long dangly proposition,
exotic in articulation, golden pattern,
curved antennae.
It quivers its way along the fascia board, halts.
Though vulnerable on the ladder,
I relax.
We regard each other for a time, poisons
set aside.
(No. 79 in a series of responses to Han-shan’s Songs of Cold Mountain)
You might well ask why a fellow with Buddhist inclinations even had a nearby can of hornet and wasp spray. Perhaps because I’m practical, or maybe for the same reason the Polistes fuscatus has repetitive stinging capacity. In short, I don’t know.
But in much the same way that Poe’s fisherman was saved from a giant Atlantic vortex (in A Descent Into the Maelstrom) by his sense of the whirlpool’s beauty and awe, here was a moment of complete, eye-level realization of the exquisiteness of another species.
(Numeric reference to Han-shan’s poem reflects the order of presentation in Burton Watson’s translation, presented as Cold Mountain, Columbia University Press, 1970.)
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