A Poem

The Time of the Wasps

 --Rose Vines

Now is not the time for your usual life.

Within our hive

the wasps have already launched

their swift assault,

overwhelming our guards,

killing the workers,

turning their avid eyes

on our pooled, collective honey.

They come for our eggs, too.

We have expected the assault—

they are wasps, after all—

but not the shape of that assault,

and that could well be

our undoing

if we pretend that

now is the time for our usual life.

Now is the time to shower love

on those who wield the pen;

the poets, the comics,

the resolute reporters,

yes,

but also on those who build palisades and pitfalls from

statutes and precedents,

who slow the charge

of the lawless now empowered.

Now is not the time for your usual life.

Use normality as a ruse, silence as a shield,

but not as a path.

Hold close your joy and love and frolicsomeness—

the you that longs for your usual life—

while in safe places you share rumblings and connections

and lay smart plans

to make a swarming cacophony in unsafe spaces.

Now is the time of the wasps

who bring their billions to crush our millions.

But they are few.

Honey bees swarm hornets, killing them with heat.