Thursday, September 10, 2009

Sharon Auberle: Musca Domestica


When you investigate my juicy plum, when you walk the rim of my Riesling, when you buzz me, gleefully, in the middle of a nap, I try, O fly, to dig deep into the Buddha corners of my heart and find the sanctity of every living thing, though I have great difficulty with mosquitoes as well, not to mention earwigs . . . but I digress. In spite of your fondness for all things revolting, I want to spare you, really I do. You, with your Kafkaesque legs and eyes, even my pen you explore! Is there any place you dare not? But heed this warning, O small one: when you walk about on my paper, rubbing those questionable feet above my fresh poem, then, my inquisitive little friend, you are history.

afternoon
one fly
on the pane
.
by Sharon Auberle
Sister Bay, Wisconsin

2 comments:

  1. I am repelled, at least in poetry, by this most ungentle, self-important way of dealing with the fly. For a healthy contrast, see below:

    A Considerable Speck

    (Microscopic)

    A speck that would have been beneath my sight
    On any but a paper sheet so white
    Set off across what I had written there.
    And I had idly poised my pen in air
    To stop it with a period of ink
    When something strange about it made me think,
    This was no dust speck by my breathing blown,
    But unmistakably a living mite
    With inclinations it could call its own.
    It paused as with suspicion of my pen,
    And then came racing wildly on again
    To where my manuscript was not yet dry;
    Then paused again and either drank or smelt--
    With loathing, for again it turned to fly.
    Plainly with an intelligence I dealt.
    It seemed too tiny to have room for feet,
    Yet must have had a set of them complete
    To express how much it didn't want to die.
    It ran with terror and with cunning crept.
    It faltered: I could see it hesitate;
    Then in the middle of the open sheet
    Cower down in desperation to accept
    Whatever I accorded it of fate.
    I have none of the tenderer-than-thou
    Collectivistic regimenting love
    With which the modern world is being swept.
    But this poor microscopic item now!
    Since it was nothing I knew evil of
    I let it lie there till I hope it slept.

    I have a mind myself and recognize
    Mind when I meet with it in any guise
    No one can know how glad I am to find
    On any sheet the least display of mind.

    -- Robert Frost

    Garry Eaton

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  2. he wouldn't kill a fly
    that guy
    but would trample on a poet

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