Where We Are This Week

a poem

I’m taking this week off so, instead, I’ll share a poem I wrote for my daughter for her first birthday last spring.

Spring ‘23

agreement

I've never been stung by a wasp
we have an agreement
hours and hours in my parents' yard
and not once did I run afraid
of that intimidating creature

I spent a whole summer painting
red brick white, and not once
did they sting with their red bodies
my suntanned skin
while I worked on the home that is now yours
but is also where they had built theirs

you'll see them in your garden
with your cucumbers tomatoes and eggplant
so it's best we learn to live together
it's best we have an agreement

I've never been stung by a bee
we have an agreement
they can bore their holes in the roof of our patio
as long as they pollinate the flowers
that bloomed when we brought you home

I've never been bitten by a snake
not when my dad showed me how to catch them
and not when we left a sleeping rattlesnake
lie in his rock bed
or when I rode my bike past that copperhead
after midnight on the mountain
we have an agreement

I was stung by hornets though
in the heat of the summer,
I laid my bicycle down on their nest
they let me off easy
one in the leg, one through the sock
as I pedalled away
I broke our agreement

I've never been bitten by a grasshopper
one landed on my hand when I was little
it gave me quite the scare
but they don't bite
so we don't have to have an agreement
but we still do

I was bit by a ladybug last summer
betrayed by the familiar little beetle
I've let often let crawl on my finger
I didn't do anything wrong
it broke our agreement
sometimes, it happens that way

but I've never been stung by a wasp
not for a lack of abundance
for there are plenty
not for a lack of stinger
of which they all have
not for an absence of ignorance
of which I'm always trying to remedy
but because we have an agreement

the one that my parents learned
and taught to me

now I have you, my precious
unstung, unbitten daughter
and I will do my best
to teach you our agreement
and I'll watch you dig in our garden
play in the clover
and chase our animals 'round the yard

and I will pray that you
will never be stung either

To a better next week,

Cheers,

~FDA