A Fly's Purpose
Steamy daylight seeps into
flesh, bone brick and drywall.
It’s late July
and a large fly is trapped
between the curtain and the hot window.
I can’t tell if it’s angry, desperate, or confused;
the buzz is intermittent, the pauses
lulls of restoration, or instincts in abeyance.
Maybe it just forgets to be anything.
I wonder if its purpose was decreed
before its short life?
The plan pronounced,
breathed into the embryonic grub
by a divine resolve?
It’s mission:
to eat the dead things of the earth,
bury its body in the rot,
the waste and heat of corruption?
Then to fly on
despoiling the despoiled,
maggoting the future.
Will the fly, on judgement day,
be called to confess the sin
of being caught
between sultry glass and fabric,
where the sun sears and strafes;
its purpose uncompleted?
And shall I, on that day of judgement,
be mystically sprayed
into a similar chemical silence?
Copyright © Eric Ashford | Year Posted 2020
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