On a hot summer day
mowing the lawn
I am thinking of
I do not know what,
probably replaying
an old conversation
and thinking of wittier
or more loving things
I could have said.
Instead, I was probably
defensive and small,
so that now, pushing
the mower and trying
to find the cut line,
it is easy to believe
that I could do better
next time I converse,
and just as I think
of the perfect whatever
to say several days ago,
the sting. And sting. Sting.
And I am animal clawing
at air. I run. I swipe my arms
crazed and wild to clear a path
to the door. But the bees
follow me through the yard
and sting me twice more
on the elbow and wrist.
They bit me! I shout,
then correct myself to
the air. They stung me!
The air does not care
what the bees have done
or if I have said it
the way I should.
And I do not practice
new ways of speaking
nor worry one bit
about conversations I
did not have as I pull
out the stingers and
feel as how the body
responds to the venom
as the body does—without
thinking, and my
wrist, elbow, thigh
and inner arch begin
to swell.
The sting enters the poem just like it would in life, out of nowhere. It takes the reader a moment to figure out what the heck is happening, a moment filled with the same kind of realization.
I might get rid of that second “probably” to assert the details of the memory more clearly, as if you are actually remembering. I love, in retrospect, that line
“Instead, I was probably
defensive and small,”
which on second read strikes me as where the bees start coming into the poem.
Very nice.
I know you want at the end to get at the swelling, but to me it reads like a delay to get there. It’s the “without thinking” that is at the heart of the poem, not the swelling. Why not move the swelling up into the ending, something like this:
” and
feel as how the body
swells from the venom
as the body does—without
thinking.”