From time to time, a fly appears in my kitchen though I haven’t seen one anywhere else, inside or out. I find its persistence both awesome and annoying. But last November, a fly caught my attention more than usual.

I might be eating breakfast
or I might be fixing dinner,
but anytime I’m in the kitchen,
the fly will join me there.

It whisks by my elbow,
it brushes across my hand,
it circles where I’m working —
like children long ago.

Wouldn’t you like to go outside
and join your cousins, little one?
No, it replies by landing beside the sink
and scavenging for snacks too small
for the human eye to see.

My husband, unconvinced of its choice,
waits by the casement window,
ready to turn the crank,
but he waits in vain
or at best
beside the wrong window.

Smart fly.
The night will be cold indeed.

I wonder, as I place chicken in a pan,
why we don’t put it out of our misery
like we did once upon a time,
before we became soft on tiny lives –-
yet we’re having chicken for dinner
and how do we explain that?

Powerful fly.
A question long buried arises again.

The question continued to haunt me during the holiday season. After all, before time changed how our bodies handle food, my husband and I preferred to be vegetarians.

Then one night as I was preparing chicken for dinner again, overwhelming gratitude poured from my heart for what had been provided, regardless of how. It made no sense and defied what my mind could argue was right. Yet that night I marveled at the healing power of free-flowing gratitude, beyond all logic, as it laid the question to rest once again.