Erin Wilson
It Seeks Cracks and Enters
The cats were busy in the basement
rolling their nature through their paws,
playing the life right out
of the little mice that sought
fall refuge inside, returning them
to their embryonic hyphens.
While in the centre of the floor,
an autumn bee clutched and clawed
its way toward the sump pump dirt,
like a man in a desert toward an oasis.
I scattered and praised the cats,
their eyes confused by the dull little deaths,
and laid the shroud of a sock
over the bumblebee,
wanting to spare them a sting
upon their curious faces.
This bee would not rise in spring.
And yet the veil I carried it in
startled me with the intensity of its agitation.
Maybe the bee had only hours left to live,
yet as I climbed the stairs and opened
the outside door, I felt its whole being buzz,
a marbled metal fabric vibrating with insistence.
About the writer:
Erin Wilson has contributed poems to San Pedro River Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, New Madrid, Tipton Poetry Journal, and Mobius, The Journal of Social Change, among others, with work forthcoming from West Texas Literary Review and Split Rock Review. She lives and writes in a small town in northern Ontario.
Image: Red Mouse by Andrew Stevovich. Oil on linen. 6 x 6 inches. 2014. By free license.
