Poetry from Daily Life: What does a poem have in common with a dead fly?

You might not feel inclined to write about a fly or take its picture. To each his own. You might be more likely to record an incident about caterpillars on your tomatoes or last Thanksgiving when the dog got to the turkey before the family did. Maybe you took a picture of the incredible sunset last week to send to your niece who is away at college and misses home. The point is that our records are Step One in writing a poem or a story or a magazine article or perhaps a whole novel. All you have to do is take Step Two, which is to pick up that proverbial pen and go back over your notes (or look more deeply at that picture) until something happens that you might not have expected.

It’s that last part, “until something happens that you might not have expected,” that I love. So you haven’t written anything since those dreadful book reports in Miss Adams’ sixth grade class? You are not a writer and don’t want to be a writer? How do you know if you haven’t tried? Challenge someone else to try it with you. What can you possibly lose? Here’s the “something I didn’t expect” after I checked into a room with a fly in it.

Absence of a Fly

When we checked into our room,

I discovered a fly in the bathroom.

A small thing, it made no sound

flitting from towel to shower curtain.

My wife saw it too.

We swatted at it but missed,

and in our hurry to feel sand on our feet,

left the matter to deal with later.

⚬

We killed the fly on the second morning.

By then we’d talked so much about

our “assigned bathroom fly,”

we missed it when it was gone.

We’d walk into the bathroom,

half expecting the fly,

knowing full well it wasn’t there.

⚬

Sometimes something that is no longer,

that lived, survived adversities for a time,

then ceased being,

leaves behind its absence

for the living to remember.

❖❖❖

You may not care for flies or you may like flies but not my poem. The nice thing about poetry is that not everyone likes everything they read (or write) but everyone likes something. The search is half the fun.

David L. Harrison serves as Poet Laureate for Missouri and for Drury University. He has written more than one hundred books and his work has been anthologized in more than two hundred others. For more information, see his website at http://davidlharrison.com and his daily blog at http://davidlharrison.wordpress.com.