The Marauders, by Jeanne Wagner

The Beekeepers and the Bird-nester, by Peter Bruegel the Elder (Netherlands) 1568

The Marauders                                                           
  
One faces us, 
the front of his bee-mask flat
as a sawed-off stump.
And look at the way he slues his body 
when he turns, 
 
as if listening for footsteps, a guilty rustle 
in the leaves.
The middle one waits empty-handed,
a witness now. 
his arms slack against his sides,
 
while the one on our right tears off
the top of the skep,
its careful basketry thrust
against his groin.
This could almost be anywhere.
 
Any time, any round up, 
any rape or pillage.
Marauders always terror-masked
and well-suited
to enter an alien world.
 
Almost out of sight, 
the bird-nester wraps his legs 
around a limb 
to stop himself falling
from the private gravity of the tree.
 
Bruegel knows he’ll return safely 
to the comfort of his table, 
with its ale, 
its plate of birds’ eggs.
His honeyed bread still warm.

Jeanne Wagner

Jeanne is the author of four previous full-length collections, most recently, One Needful Song, winner of the 2024 Catamaran Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in North American Review, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah and The Southern Review. A retired tax accountant, she lives in Kensington, Californian.