Millions of flies converged on a great hall
From all directions.
Some hitching on jets,
Some on cargo ships,
Some on their own power
To report on what they had witnessed
In city and town
On all 7 continents:
They came from houses and prisons,
Boardrooms and palaces,
Marketplaces and gas stations,
Tenements and cushy neighborhoods,
War zones and exclusion zones,
Parking lots, factories,
Sweatshops and barbershops,
Bathrooms and bedrooms
Farms and landfills.
Many had flown
A thousand miles.
Their wings were tattered
And spent.
They were too tired
To even wash their faces.
The verdict was unanimous.
People are destroying the planet everywhere.
They are Killing each other outright with terrible weapons
Or slowly with toxic air and water,
And if not each other
Then themselves.
It won't be long!
There was an atmosphere of jubilation.
A buzzing anthem rose to a pitch
And then subsided into a collective snore
As all the flies drifted
Into an ecstatic sleep,
All dreaming the same dream of victory.
Soon the planet would be theirs.
Only when all the flies had fallen
Into exhausted slumber
Could the tiniest buzz of a voice be heard
Stammering: It's not true, not all the people
Are killing each other off.
There are some who are loving each other
And loving the planet.
I saw them everywhere I went
Quietly living their lives,
Taking care of themselves and each other
And building community
And not joining in the mayhem.
I tell you, some of these people
Would not hurt a fly!
But nobody heard his bad news
And soon he too fell asleep.
............
I probably got the idea for writing this poem from having been exposed to the folk and wisdom tale motif of the delayed message. An example is one that Erica Helm Meade tells a version of in "The Moon in the Well", from the Akamba tribe in Africa. Spirit feels sorry for humans because their lives are hard and then they die. He decided to grant them an afterlife as compensation for suffering so much. At the time, some animals could traverse between different regions of creation. Two such animals were Chameleon and Weaverbird. Chameleon was slow but steady and reliable, Weaverbird was quick and tricky. Creator decided to send Chameleon as his messenger. When Chameleon arrived he was shy and took his time to order his thoughts. When he spoke, he kept starting over, trying to remember Spirit's exact words. Weaverbird was sure this was what was happening and he felt compelled to take charge. He told Spirit he was going to step out for while but, as soon as he was out of Spirit's sight, he flew to the where the humans were gathered around Chameleon and he blurted the first thing that came to him: Spirit says that when you die you will shrivel up like an old root! The humans were devastated but before they had fully processed what Weaverbird said, Chameleon was just concluding his speech. . . . So when you die, do not fret, your spirit will continue in a realm beyond suffering. The result was, the people did not know which messenger to believe and have been debating what happens at death ever since.
In my poem, the message of the majority of flies is in the form of an official statement of fact with no nuance or argument. Based on a superficial overview of what's going on in the world, we are doomed; the end is nigh. The flies are all exhausted; they just want to file their reports and go to sleep. The solitary little fly, whose message completely debunks any claim to consensus, falls on a million deaf ears. That little fly speaks for the granular view of what is going on in communities and neighborhoods all over the world. Hope is in the details. The little fly who no one listens to represents the pacifist, the progressive, the human rights activist, the advocate for indigenous rights, the radical environmentalist, social democratic reformist, the LGBDQ rights activist.
Let us all be proud to be the little fly but let us not fall asleep.
(Article changed on Apr 23, 2022 at 11:11 AM EDT)
