Windswept moor - a sting in the tale

Walking on the Godney mile

When out of the sky flew a missile

It pinned me right at the top of the chest

This horse fly, wasp or hornet's nest

It was like a flying dagger

On a loaded spring

That the willows had whipped

Where the bluebird's sing

But the only thing singing that day on the moor

Was the wind that whistled

And my cry of pain that soared

Well what I had now was a creepy crawly down my shirt,

I slapped and I wrapped it, but it stang me and it hurt

Then as it tumbled down my tummy, I thought oh mummy!

It will be heading for my waist and my shorts. What's worse!

Luckily the offender flew on its way

But now I had a glowing red bulge upon my gullet

It itched sore like buggery, and my throat swelled

From wasp thuggery

Led me to believe I had been bitten by a bullet's burst

I pushed on and I did rub it to try in vain to dull it

But the pain did throb like a mullet had slapped me off my perch

The moors rolled on in soliloquy

Of a Roman revellery, when Mars the god of War

Is charging full red of face

Belligerently raging, the wind's war was waging

And holding hostage

Willows, reeds all in its embrace

Fellows linked arms and swayed

On that tortuous fierce windswept way

And faced the storm as they face the grave

Together as one, in unity strong and brave

Well what a wasp, what a stinger

What a counterfeit saint and a sinner

To have stung me that way, and then got away

I'm a red rosette winner

My throat swelled up I began to gasp

The sky turned sideways, cast askance

I looked one last look in that final glance

Saw my world fall apart and a fleeing wasp

I fell for what seemed to be days 

Down the rhyne in the gutter of the moor's water ways

And saw there all kinds of monster misbehave

From Gorillas in the ditch to crocodile graves

From the tombstones of vampires who could never

Find their rest

To the boomtowns of rats, just past the last harvest

And they each were a forgotten race, by the race of man

Abandoned and left to fend in their wayside caravan

As I slept in the wasp's sleep, it's poison did circulate

It turned my cheeks a crimson red

It turned my teeth an ashen black

As I chattered I did hibernate

Away from men's minds and matters

Into the dreamland of the wasp

He hovers above the flowery field 

He zooms in and out of the farmer's meals

And around pots of honey left at the rainbow's end

And I see that he killed me, so I might be his friend

I wake up near midnight

My back it is sore

My legs, are like black defenders

And what is more

There are no longer two

Six instead is their score

And my arms and hands into legs were blended

Nothing like they were before

As for my stomach, a thorax hard shell

Ribs like some titanium

Or carbon fibre as well

Light and of the strongest mould

Nothing less than from the fire's of hell

And I have no bum, no hips, no body

Except a bulbous bulge and at its end

A pointed stinger swells

I shiver at the sight, the thought sickens my stomach

But as I go to rub my eyes I realize

I have none, and then my spirits plummet

What has become of my head I can hardly tell

My mouth is some tapered visor and

With pincers there as well

As for my eyes they are disguised like some huge

Side placed globes, that stare out in all directions

No left or right I know

No night or day either,

Just shades of bright

And this is how I find the ether

Like a flowing road of light

I can see the sky rails

Can see the pollen trails

And thermals, the tiny discrete lines

Too miniature for detection by human eye

At last I notice behind me, folded in some natal sack

My wings like a quiver of arrows, ready for the attack

As I turn myself over

I feel them spread out naturally,

And beat and quaver and wobble and trim

To the humming sound of a bee

I rub my legs together

In some natural preparation for the flight

And before I take off I remember

To clean my large eyes

Ready to have clearest sight

Then I am off, it is lift off

The first unmanned wasp or kite

Is blown by the thin wind

His life to rescind

Which is better? Fight or flight?

I sail in the eves, I investigate nooks and crannies

Where I fail, my wasp heart believes

It can beat all the crooks and nannies

That if someone does you some harm

This sword will rebalance the scale

And you have to be cruel to be kind

In this world, for loser or winner will mind

That there is always a sting in the tale