by Gerald Friedman
Fury
Late August and the yellow jackets
are fighting each other and the butterflies
to get at the figs whose sweet seedy pulp
oozes from burst sacs and spills
onto branches A pair of wasps locked
abdomen to abdomen wrestles
on the ground legs grappling
stingers pulsing Others aim at my head
to keep me from the sugary storehouse
Their time here must be coming to a close
a premonition built into their brains
that makes them aggressive and feverish
Unlike you who stood so peacefully
at the pasture gate content despite
your body’s betrayal and own approaching sunset
to watch the Angus gather like a second shadow
beneath the field’s solitary sycamore
What must it be like to watch the horizon
light up in orange and gold to smell
the first smoky wisps of fall and taste the last
intense juices of summer knowing
what it foretells—that soon you will be husk shell
blown away in October’s breezes
You went so gently like a soft exhalation
My departure will be more like the wasp’s
stealing all the sweetness I can for myself
and ending in a frenzy of stinging
Deidra Greenleaf Allan has been published in American Poetry Review, Poetry Miscellany, Puerto del Sol, West Branch, and Quartet Journal, among other print and online journals. In 2001 she was selected as Montgomery County (PA) Poet Laureate by Robert Hass. She has received a Leeway Emerging Artist Award and was a finalist for a Pew Fellowship in poetry. One of her poems was selected in 2012 by Musehouse as its Poem of Hope poster.
Gerald Friedman grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, and now teaches physics and math in northern New Mexico. He has published poetry in various journals, and photography in the Santa Fe Literary Review as well as Feral. You can see more of his work at https://jerryfriedman.wixsite.com/my-site-2