Hunting Hornets

Once I found a huge hornet’s nest

in a tree in front of my house on Hibiscus

easily as large as my head

and those black and yellow b******s

were buzzing around making it

so my kids couldn’t play in the yard;

I waited, though,

I waited until the snows fell to act

(rarely I can be a patient man)

they were all asleep in there,

early March, the grass

merely a crunch beneath my boots

they were asleep, doing whatever

hornets do when they can’t leave their homes

stuck in their little hexagonal apartments;

I used the handle of a rake

knocked it down into the street

few of them came out, crawling

on the outside, but it didn’t matter

they were too cold and sleepy to sting me;

I poured a little gas, just a splash,

right on the top of that huge cone

then tossed a match;

It went up in a flash, and I watched

as they tried to get out, a few of them

black and yellow

turning

to gray and white;

Eventually though the whole thing

turned to ash, collapsed in on itself

I stirred the remains with the rake haft

and it occurred to me they spent so long

building it, months of work, their entire lives

since birth that’s all they did…

build and build on that cone

until it was bigger than my head

all that work, their entire lives

their world;

but it only took

a rake

a splash of gas

one match

and everything went away

gray

dust now forever

and ash.