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A FLY (AND INFINITY)

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read670 views

Whilst I am at my morning exercises,

the limited dumbbell, the selected

Pilates, observing, through the French window,

the shimmering, ornamental grasses –

that obscure the water feature – and the odd

finch and dunnock feasting on the birch

and the lawn, a large, black, raucous fly

hits one of the panes, once, twice, thrice then stops,

becomes silent. We are all learners, most of the time.

It – in a long life I have never learned

how to sex a fly – walks with care, slowly,

methodically, systematically

across the pane, looking for an end to

such transparent nonsense.

 

 

 

SUMMERS OF VIOLENCE

He came in winter, buzzing by the stove.

She fed him crumbs and butter. She was very

lonely. She liked his talk of summer,

grew perceptive as a fly. But in June,

when she still saw nothing, she squeezed her fist

and heard him scream. “I am the universal

suffering man, a sacrifice in

an empty room, reduced to a shadow

on a public wall, tearing my way

to the top in the bathhouse.” She called him

Gabriel. The night she was born bombs blitzed seeds

in her brain,  a wild garden that flowered

in summers of violence.