The Wasp Queen

While some wasps
are solitary and have no leader,
birthing females and males by deliberate choice
in holes and crevices, others

survive by the dictates of a queen
who started the nest alone and then created
her country through her children:  one nation
under the eaves, in the crook of an azalea,

high up in an oak.
They do not mean to encroach on us, but they do,
so one day I took a pole saw and brought a nest down,
a paper ball damn near as big and grey as my head,

dropping it into a metal barrel. Before the war cloud
could form around us, my next door neighbor
laid down a stream of poison and we charged in,
poured gasoline into the barrel, and set it off.

Queen wasps aren’t much like bee queens:
they move, take part in the struggle, and are not less mobile
than others of their kind. 
When our fire came, it brought to her

a break from that responsibility: no time to assign
blame, no time to scour the landscape
for the ones who were far flung and far away,
calling them back to fight for one and all;

so I assume that as the heat took her,
crisped her into just one more shell
undistinguishable from the rest, she simply died
without a thought for all she’d made and lost.

The soldiers buzzed around for hours, angry
and small, untethered and willing to die
for something that no longer existed.  We watched and killed
when necessary, keeping the kids and pets indoors

until we were sure that all was right with our world.
Then, we ordered pizza, popped beers, congratulated ourselves
on a mission accomplished; not seeing that one survivor, one new queen,
in a bush not far from the ruins of the old world,

was chewing leaves,
making more pulp,
and preparing
to build again.

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From a writing prompt by louiserobertson  .