Slow MoverWildWords – Lord of the Flies
The flies come first
as rumor,
black letters of punctuation
in the cellar air,
small restless witnesses
to what I have not buried.
They find the hidden place
before I do,
the sweetness gone sour,
the secret body
given back to its elements.
I thought death
would announce itself
with trumpets,
or thunder,
or at least
a proper lament.
But here it is
in wings,
in the frantic scripture
of a thousand tiny bodies
writing circles
around the bulb.
Lord of the flies,
lord of the unclean corners,
lord of what ripens
when I refuse to look,
you do not create the death.
You only reveal it.
You rise from the wound
and make it audible.
You gather
where something has ended
and been left unnamed.
So I stand in the basement
with paper strips hanging
like sad yellow prayers,
with poison in the air,
with a broom in my hand,
and I know
this is not only about flies.
Something in me
has also gone untended.
Some old grief
has softened in the dark.
Some resentment
has been born in bitter warmth.
Some fear
has bred in the damp boxes
of the soul.
And the outer world,
faithful as a mirror,
begins to reflect what is within.
The dead thing calls forth wings.
The buried thing
becomes a cloud.
Lord above,
but Lord beneath even this,
teach me to descend
without disgust,
to find what has died,
to name it,
to remove it,
to open the window
where I can,
to let the clean wind
do its slow ministry.
For even the fly
is a witness,
even decay
is a kind of bell,
even infestation
can become annunciation
if it leads me
to the hidden corpse,
if it leads me
to the truth,
if it leads me
at last
to bury what is dead
and bless what still
wants to live.
