Fruity Gift

He brought her a gift,
a seasonal gift
— a gift to make her sick
if she ate all too much of it:
Sweet, juicy, tooth-mash of apricot, cherry,
plum — what did it matter;
some early, some late,
in a woven tray of shaved wood.
She was happy and spat

pips, pits and stones
with gleeful abandon.
The slats of wood stained pink.
And then the fruit flies came.
Her purple tongue curled
in disappointment,
for, perhaps, they had been already there,
ensconced and smuggled in
directly from the grocer.

The next time he visited
they had multiplied their little lives
to hundreds of drosophila.
She was sitting in the centre
of a complex web of sellotape,
sucking on a final luscious peach,
trying not to think of all those
minuscule wings a-flutter,
raging in sticky silence.

Clive Donovan

If you have any thoughts about this poem, Clive Donovan would be pleased to hear them