Helena Minton
The Gardener and the Bees

The Wasp Nest in My Neighbor’s Magnolia

The nest wintered above my head
in the gray branches
I walk past each morning.
I’d like to knock it out of the tree with a stick.

The magnolia blooms
pink and white like a girl
in her quinceañera dress.
The nest rests like a piñata
before it’s decorated,
a basket of ash, a head,
light as death, half-hidden
by the petals’ waxy bloat.

I feel I know the dark interior hollow,
could lower it over my hair
and walk, an eyeless monster.
A disturbance across my mind
from time to time,
it isn’t hurting anyone, any more
than a twig in the road.

Yet I don’t forget this force
of nature a few feet from my house
a swarm spun with furious methodical industry.
It prods my urge to covet or destroy.
I will it to disintegrate
layer by papery layer.
I’d like to grab my neighbor’s arm and ask,
What is it still doing here?

isbn 1-59661-056-5
39 pages/$9

These beautiful poems are both sensual and spare, performing one of poetry’s most urgent tasks, to show us what is before our eyes and what to our peril we so easily miss—the earth and how we live on it daily—what one poem refers to as “the ignored world.” —Betsy Sholl, author of Late Psalm

This poet’s errand is to take you, with great skill, from the wilderness to her own exquisite backyard. —Mark Schorr, Executive Director, Robert Frost Foundation

Helena Minton grew up in New England. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. Her book of poems, The Canal Bed, was published by Alice James Books. She works as a librarian and lives with her family near Boston.