Flies
BY ALICE OSWALD
This is the day the flies fall awake mid sentence
and lie stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches
only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement which
break off suddenly as if the questioner had been shot
this is one of those wordy days
when they drop from their winter quarters in the curtains and sizzle as they fall
feeling like old cigarette butts called back to life
blown from the surface of some charred world
and somehow their wings which are little more than flakes of dead skin
have carried them to this blackened disembodied question
what dirt shall we visit today?
what dirt shall we revisit?
they lift their faces to the past and walk about a bit
trying out their broken thought-machines
coming back with their used up words
there is such a horrible trapped buzzing wherever we fly
it’s going to be impossible to think clearly now until next winter
what should we
what dirt should we
Alice Oswald captures the moment, my moment, our moment! For me, her poem Flies poetically highlights the current state of our national strident discourse. My journey seeking inner peace with myself is balanced by my compassion: for too many years compassion I needed to nurture for myself.
As I stated last post I now seek a neighborhood, a community of kind people. Balance outside as I strive for balance inside. Oswald’s poem echoes my daily slack-jawed shock. I connect with her “flies (falling) awake mid -sentence and (lying) stunned on the windowsill shaking with speeches only it isn’t speech it is trembling sections of puzzlement”
My metaphorical lighthouse is surrounded by an ocean. I used to wonder at the vastness of our ocean of humanity. But to secure the balance I need I can not focus on the humanity that includes all us humans, I have to focus on humanity that also refers to the kind feelings (we) humans often have for each other.
Really? “Kind feelings we often have for each other?” Easy to have kind feelings for each other if we agree on something. No, the test is to have kind feelings for someone who has an opinion or judgement that is different than mine.
My family, my neighbors, my community, my nation, even my world is blinded by the darkness of division. That blindness allows us to settle in with a blanket of judgement awash with fear.
Alice Oswald, as recounted by one Judith Thurman in a New Yorker article entitled STREAMING DEVICE states that the poet (Oswald) defines her art as as a form of dissidence. “I think it’s often assumed that the role of poetry is to comfort,” she wrote (earlier in the Guardian), “but for me, poetry is the great unsettler. It questions the established order of the mind. It is radical, by which I don’t mean it is either left wing or right wing, but it works to the root of thinking.”
So this is my summary;
Poetry– Questions the established order of the mind.
Language-Knitted words, connected to pattern new order from old questions.
Action– Motion instigated to lay a new quilt of patterns over an other’s old patterned quilt.
Judgment– Throwing a new quilt of thought off in favor of an old quilt.
Fear– What is left after both quilts of patterned thought are abandoned.
Result– Confrontation, discordant discourse separated by the politics of pointing fingers. Middle fingers to be sure but sadly, trigger fingers too!
Division is reaped by that fear mongering and hateful rhetoric. Wow, as the character in the wonderful movie Airplane exhorted, “I picked a hell of a time to quit smoking!” Well I picked a hell of a time to seek harmony and peace. But maybe more of us can venture out and calmly vaccinate our neighborhoods against hate by leading and listening with compassion, empathy, and patience. Too many humans continue to be the targets of hate and downright nastiness.
Thank you for reading and go with peace and joy and VOTE!
Mark