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.