I saw this last week after I decided I had just won the war against the wasps trying to build something under the eaves. (I would go out every night and spray off their progress with the hose; I thought that was kinder than wasp spray but then I read this.)
The Yellow Jackets
by Janel Pineda
When they began nesting on the eaves of our home
the summer we were almost without one
I couldn’t find it in me to do anything
but watch one after the other, drifting
determinedly toward our roof.
They spent July busying themselves
with my father’s roses, picking
at caterpillars, taking refuge from the heat.
I watched their queen carry half her weight
in chewed-up wood, then use it to build
her hiding place on my porch.
Something tells me I should have gotten rid of them,
but what sense did it make? To rid myself
of what I could live peacefully beside?
To take their home while we begged to be
allowed to keep ours?