Oh, little bee,
as autumn approaches,
you hover on my porch roof,
between life and death.
One day, you fall,
land in my hair.
Thinking you’re just a bug,
I brush you away.
In one last effort to survive,
your stinger latches onto my eye.
In pain, I manage to somehow extricate you,
but the damage is done.
Now, I must tell people,
“Think this looks bad?
You should see the other guy.”
***
The above poem, inspired by something that happened to me last year, was published in this month’s issue of The Writer’s Grapevine. To read past issues of this free, online magazine featuring poems, stories, essays, and some advertising, click here. If you’d like to receive this publication by email, send a blank message to: writersGV+subscribe@groups.io You can click on the Play button below to hear me read the poem.
By the way, for those of you who use the National Library Services for the Blind and Print Disabled, The Red Dress is available for download from their site here. No matter how you read it, please be sure to review it wherever you can. That goes for all my books. Thank you for stopping by. Stay safe, happy, and healthy, and may you always have positive experiences.
New! The Red Dress
Copyright July 2019 by DLD Books
When Eve went to her high school senior prom, she wore a red dress that her mother had made for her. That night, after dancing with the boy of her dreams, she caught him in the act with her best friend. Months later, Eve, a freshman in college, is bullied into giving the dress to her roommate. After her mother finds out, their relationship is never the same again.
Twenty-five years later, Eve, a bestselling author, is happily married with three children. Although her mother suffers from dementia, she still remembers, and Eve still harbors the guilt for giving the dress away. When she receives a Facebook friend request from her old college roommate and an invitation to her twenty-five-year high school class reunion, then meets her former best friend by chance, she must confront the past in order to face the future.
***
