This Sort of Tending To

This Sort of Tending To

“Remember when you talked to me about your soul, about

saving it?”

                                Home

                                Marilynne Robinson

I’d wanted to write about the two flies

I’d shut against the screen and window

yesterday--two dirty old flies I pulled

the ivy away from the window frame for,

two creatures buzzing on the mesh.

There happen to be three candles on that

sill, as though I’d hope some vigil of mine

would be seen from the road by some passer-

by, another soul on a night like tonight

with the rain and the thunder and the lightning.

Even though I don’t write enough about

the souls that like wind blow around

on my insides, that try like those trapped 

flies to find a light and a small place to hike,

still, somehow all they are, all we ever are,

is on or up to our knees like all rest, quite like a prayer.

Even though I’m the one whose shut them up

to die against the streaks of rain that arrived

last night instead of going after them with the thick

extended end of a napkin to beat them

mid-flight to death, still, I’m glad I didn’t

kill them but left them to die two together.

I can be glad about that later, can’t I?  When

I finally open the window and their little

bug bodies will have been sifted through

and brushed against and sent away as though

their only purpose, after their maggot

selves sucked on all that was rot around them, 

was to live against this sort of dying, coming in 

from the cold too soon gone too soon left to what rain

at this very moment brings them to their knees

if they have knees, yes, if they have them

and can use them at all.