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
by Sharon Auberle
Sister Bay, Wisconsin
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:
ReplyDeleteA 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
he wouldn't kill a fly
ReplyDeletethat guy
but would trample on a poet