A DIALOGUE ON GNATS (Conversations with Stick Series #12)

A DIALOGUE ON GNATS

From where I sit, Stick, I can see how God
presides over the fate of mice and men.

Look at those gnats dancing on the head
of a cabbage: now that’s what feasting is.

Suck and fly, suck and fly! Swarm around
the little garden, bite and fly, bite and fly.

Isn’t this the ritual of all struggle? Take
all you can while you can. Grasp if you can.

It won’t be long nor will this last forever:
the spectre of a reaper lurks in the deep shade,

its wings lit by shards of sunlight. There it is.
The Crow descends on the cabbage patch.

It sizes up the swarm of gnats, and quickly
opens its beak to let them fly into a throat

that earlier cackled an invitation: Come!
Abandon all hope you who enter here. Come.

Much like the chapel bells ringing for the
flock to gather for the Rapture, milord.

Shut up, Stick, I see where your point is going.

—Albert B. Casuga
06-15-11

Prompt: A cloudless sky and air so clear, I can see gnats dancing 100 feet away. In the deep shade, borrowing shards of sun, the wings of a crow.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 06-15-11 http://www.morningporch.com/2011/06/