gnat poem

New poem, no title, first draft, your feedback requested:

The weekend of the gnat infestation —
I still think they were gnats and not fruit flies —
we spent hours in solid concentration with the
gadget, the electrified tennis-racket contraption,
the thing that killed sometimes silently,
sometimes with a sparkler-sized spark.

Tiny bodies piled up. Brown or grey bodies
too small in motion to see piled up.
Suddenly we were a team again, banded together
despite last weekend’s argument:
Red Team All Systems Go.

Was it the gnats, the series of bugs with brains
and wings smaller than dust that somehow outfoxed us?
We fight something we can barely see, and leave the rest
for whatever comes whenever. I hope these are with you.

I’ll answer your question now, as I did when you asked,
and over and over. You are good to me.
We are best when we are good to each other,
of course; the question wouldn’t need to be asked
if we were always good to each other.

You need to know and I say:
we will always be fighting something we can barely see.
So I’ll try to be on your side,
pointing at the speck against the painted wall
as you lunge and swoop, as the crackle sounds,
as one last thing we can defeat has ended.

— Halsted M. Bernard

About Halsted M. Bernard

Halsted, a/k/a cygnoir, does stuff with words. Her favourite things to do with words are keeping this diary, writing stories, and organising information. She lives in Edinburgh with her husband, two cats, a few gadgets, several fountain pens, and many books.

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