Bad Start
to the day, what with finding
feathers, then bodies
of two hens killed by hawks.
And power out, so I can’t
work despite glaring deadlines.
Picking tomatoes and chard
for breakfast, I step on a bee
whose final act is to heave
her brave sword in my sole.
Startled, I skid on dew-wet grass,
fall sharply, my face whirling
a breath’s distance from roses
prickled with scarifying thorns,
and laugh.
I’d been soggy
cereal in the bowl,
mail dropped in a ditch,
a garden wizened by blight,
but now,
foot in lap, I pinch
out the stinger,
stabbed by gratitude
for an insect’s
venomous antidote.
Now all I see is a shining
curtain of light pulled open
to the third act of a comedy
performed as it
is lived.
Laura Grace Weldon
Originally published in Gyroscope Review Find more poems in my collection, Tending.