WATCHING A WOUNDED WASP

Finn Cassidy

I wonder how and why it's wounded.

Grounded, it wanders the earth like the walking dead -

no whirring wings slicing thin warm air.

Following last night's fiftieth festivities,

I too, grounded with my own wounds -

with little energy for life, I sit in stupor on a summer terrasse,

its vast undulating sandstone surface,

a scorching Sahara desert for me,

Death Valley for a wilting wasp gasping for air.

I can't intervene to save it, so I survey it,

as it staggers around in asymmetric spheres -

disorientation is its penultimate destination,

a journey of staggering calligraphy 'B-line' swirls

between the cooler shade of northern pull,

and the lounging languish of southern comfort,

unconsciously completing compass's coordinates,

incertitude's indecision irregularly alternates

between the arcs of sun's rising and setting crests,

occasional sporadic straight lines traverse grout lines,

like a grey grid of ridges on low rocky ranges,

marking out the visible scars of invisible tectonic lines.

I admire your feeble attempts to go off-grid,

perhaps, in search of 'a path less travelled',

across oasis sprinklers and summer's green grass,

yet somehow, by chance or choice, you clamber back

to stumble about in search of life on your dessert stretch,

bare, but for scavenging ants and deceased confetti,

dispersed among my pointless meandering thoughts -

this wasp, like me, will never know the time nor place

to face an unfussed, unrushed passing to our ‘unfuture’ -

a release from the rapture of resilience's torture.

Author Bio

Finn Cassidy (he/him/his) was born in Ireland. He grew up along the ‘troubled’ border between Ireland and Northern Ireland during the 1970s and 80s a period of social and military conflict referred to as ‘The Troubles’. His poems, often Inspired by the natural world and cosmos, have featured in a variety of international poetry journals and anthologies (in print and online). He is currently completing his first full poetry collection: Notions of Starkology-Codology.

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