Pop, pop went his gun, and pigeons flew.
His wife was in the farmhouse before a window, speaking through it to a fly,
resting on the other side,
“I wouldn't stay there if I were you.”
Tap, tap, tap went her finger on the pane, the fly didn't move.
Tap, tap, she went again.
The labourer in the field abandoned his hoe and watched the birds scatter.
Pop, pop, pop. Up they flew and down again.
Nearby some ponies with small children on their backs trotted sedately on.
A blue dog tried to escape his lead and collar, and his grey-haired owners too.
Only the farmer's wife knew who was the pursuer and who the pursued.
The farmer was after pigeons; the spider, in time, would get the fly,
a fat juicy fly, for dinner.
The pigeons had been scared, scared off the land, scared from their nests;
the fly caught, bound with thread as strong as steel, vibrated to the wind's caress.
The farmer's wife had nothing to pluck;
the spider had had her sport, but was not then hungry.
The labourer retrieved his hoe and again set to work;
the birds, none of them pigeons, settled, in their familiar roosts.
The ponies with their loads went on their way;
the blue dog, somewhat calmed, hastened his owners to the car.
The day progressed and the hour of sext was nigh,
the sun rising higher in the sky, to blister the earth beneath it.
And still the fly, dying or dead, waited.
At the hour of nones, the sun had shone and shone.
The spider's web had been gilded gold, as had the fly imprisoned in it.
The farmer's wife had been keeping an eye,
“I warned you,” she'd said to the fly a number of times.
The farmer had heaved a heavy sigh on hearing her and gone away,
to what he knew how to deal with: his land, his workers, his animals.
Having heard the door bang, she had turned her hand to making pastry,
for a pie which would now be empty of pigeon.
Down the road, the ponies riders had departed long ago; all was quiet.
The blue dog happily played, with his owners, in his own back garden.
As vespers approached, the pie was in the oven,
filling the farmhouse with its fragrance, of steak and of kidney.
The farmer's wife stood, red-faced, at the now opened kitchen window.
Pie! On a hot day!
But the farmer wants what he wants, pigeon or no pigeon.
The body of the fly had disappeared, as if it had never been.
Had it, the farmer's wife wondered?
The spider had not taken it, she didn't think, perhaps the wind?
Ah! Both had been thwarted: the farmer and the spider.
The farmer's wife smiled, for the pursuers had not got, on this occasion, all they desired.
Picture credit: Landscape with Farmer, 1896, Henri Rousseau (Source: WikiArt.)
Written August 2020.
