Philosophy
Strong morning sun heats the east window,
so pleasing to me and three sturdy flies.
Grownup flies – indoors. In January?
If something was rotting here I’d have smelled it.
While I look online for an answer, they
make shadow-plays with their appendages.
Oh – they’re probably Cluster Flies, who came inside
last fall. Vagabond Cluster Flies gravitating to warmth.
I keep our stapler on the window ledge –
a heavy old Swingline.
Through the years of my childhood,
when my family drove on Queens Boulevard
we passed the Swingline factory in Long Island City.
Once my mother or father must’ve said They make staplers there.
So on every trip, I’d notice: There’s the stapler factory.
Now the plumpest vagabond lands on the stapler.
Strides with skinny legs on my childhood memory...
Is that a nexus, where things connect? You want to untangle
beginnings and ends? Keep it simple: warm sun,
consciousness and flies.
About the Author: Sue Blaustein is the author and publisher of “In the Field, Autobiography of an Inspector” (2018), “The Beer Line” (2022) and “All the Secrets Around Me” (2025). She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she worked as a food safety inspector for the Milwaukee Health Department for 25 years before her 2016 retirement.
Image Credit: Leon Terra “Have You Seen My Stapler?” CC BY 2.0, Public domain image courtesy of Wikimedia
As It Ought To Be 