When I adjust my chair, a stab of pain at the base of my middle finger: a yellow jacket, equally alarmed by the encounter, abdomen pulsing.
hornets
Friday November 08, 2019
First light. A small bird who’d been spending the night in the old hornets’ nest chirps and flutters off. A light dusting of snow.
Monday April 29, 2019
A half-warm morning, with the sun half out. I notice that birds have made so many holes in the old hornets’ nest, it’s now Janus-faced.
Saturday September 30, 2017
Cloudy and cold. Gusts of wind try on bespoke garments of yellow leaves. The hornets are still flying, tough as the nails in their abdomens.
Friday September 29, 2017
Bright morning after a cold night. A hornet drops from her nest, hitting the porch floor with an audible tick, then flies unsteadily away.
Monday September 25, 2017
The front-porch hornets have dwindled; the new queens must’ve pupated and gone. The remaining workers soldier on like unRaptured Christians.
Friday September 23, 2016
A dead hornet lies on her back beside my chair with her six legs folded neatly over her thorax. At the woods’ edge, a rain of yellow leaves.
Wednesday June 29, 2016
On the underside of a porch railing, a hornet gathers a mouthful of wood. A small yellow leaf caught in a spiderweb twirls in the wind.
Sunday November 03, 2013
Four degrees above freezing. When I nudge the foot of a hornet clinging to the bottom of the railing, she swings her leg out in a slow arc.
Monday October 21, 2013
Patches of frost in the yard. A yellow jacket from the underground nest in the garden lands on the shoulder of my sunlit coat.