Stung on the Eye
Robert Allen
June 15, 2021
Why I thought not a one
of those buzzing brown-and-yellow-striped pests
clustered on a low branch of our magnolia
would swoop down to land its stinger on me
I do not know, but my eight-year-old head
had decided this nest must be destroyed—
perhaps it spoiled my favorite climbing tree,
maybe I could not stand to hear the buzz,
or August heat gave me a love of shadows,
clearly my young ego was in control—
and with my Louisville Slugger in hand
I marched up to that tree and took a whack.
Oh not just any whack. I swung the barrel
of my bat right through the meat of that nest,
whose startled guests became an angry cloud.
I turned but warm air held me like a blanket,
arms up, legs sluggish, and on my left eyelid
a pin pricked. In fear I began to run
a doomed mad dash across our wide backyard.
Then pain, tears, growing fire below my brow
forced me to my knees, where with skyward looks
I found the house and wailed for help. My mother,
rudely taken from her afternoon nap,
was knowing and efficient. She prepared
a bandage of baking soda and ice
to bring down the swelling, she hugged me close,
and not once did she scold or chasten me
for such a foolish stunt. Now I can wonder,
nearly fifty-eight years after the fact,
about the psychological effect
of the lesson learned, how it hurt so much
to see the orange glow of my bedroom walls
that day, but what still takes me by surprise
is the dead weight of that hot summer air,
bouncing off thick green grass, and how I thought
by running through it I could get away
from anything.
Robert Allen is retired and lives with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and six cats. He has poems in di-vêrsé-city, Voices de la Luna, the Texas Poetry Calendar, the San Antonio Express-News, The Ocotillo Review, and Poetry on the Move. He now co-facilitates Gemini Ink’s Open Writer’s Lab.