Submission to Emptiness
       

For a week there are seven wasps
outside the window,

whose bodies huddle together
to stave off cold.

Each morning for a week
I watch these wasps,

stare at their body markings,
muted gold and black stripes,

slender see-through wings
still against thorax, abdomen,

edges overlapping those wings
of other wasps, their eyelash-thin

legs unmoving, eyes geometric
and unfocused, barely breathing.

For one week there are seven still wasps
and then none at all, and I am poorer for it.

The window is empty, bald-faced,
a clear pane of glass

through which I see
nothing but sky.

Tweet

Copyright © 2012 Sara Dailey All rights reserved
from Earlier Lives
Dos Madres Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission