September 30, 2025

poem in which a stinging thing appears

This will be a poem in which a stinging thing appears but does not sting.
First, though, you have to bear the embarrassment of the phrase “stinging thing”
since you are not an entomologist, in the same way you’ve had to bear
the small shame of not knowing any constellations beyond the usual suspects,
or particular birds beyond the obvious. Not to mention you are still confused
by which end of a boat is the ”bow” and which is “stern.” Not to mention
there are certain people in your own community whose names elude you,
despite the many introductions, and it feels too late to ask again.
But in the poem, your not being an entomologist is of little importance
in the same way the poem in which a winter sky served as a backdrop
meant you didn’t need to know the particulars of the stars that night,
in the same way the poem in which your father greeted a bird every morning
was more about your father and less about the bird. The poem you’re writing
takes place at the very beginning of autumn, and maybe you’ll say something
about that turn in the weather. Or not, because you’ve done that so many times
in other poems. No matter. Eventually, you’ll get to the part where you see
the stinger and you’ll think about taking a step or two back. But in the poem,
you can do anything you want, and you don’t step back because the poem
you are writing has to do with closeness and wonder and how
there are moments where a kind of veil lifts and your fear about the world
lifts with it. Three-quarters of the way through, you consider how you are,
in fact, also a stinging thing, and by the next-to-last-line you are thinking about
all the times you could have stung but didn’t, which is to say the poem
might also be about forgiveness in the same way the poem with the night sky
was about hope and the poem with the bird was about love. Which makes you
think that maybe the confusion about boats and names is pretty small potatoes.
Which is good because in the poem you are writing in which a stinging thing
appears but does not sting, there are no potatoes at all.