Fastidious Fly and other poems by Nicola Healey
PN Review 251, January - February 2020
Fastidious Fly
A fly was drowning in my water glass.
I tipped it out and it clung onto a blade of grass
like a windsurfer.
It steadied itself and then
meticulously cleaned its face, like a cat.
It lifted each iridescent wing
and smoothed them down with thread-thin legs,
closing them into place like a pair of shears,
glinting.
Then it took off.
I could have swallowed all that
intricate effort-to-be;
it wouldn’t have tasted of anything.
Spirit Level
When you are ill, you are always working
on getting well. When you’re well,
what you were aiming for seems only
air – the horizon is around you
not ahead. Spinning dancers
fix their gaze on a single
spot. But we must live with vert-
igo, and loss of balance. I used
to be hypnotised by
the bubble in a spirit level:
I’d watch my dad check if surfaces
were level or plumb as though he was
testing the lie of the world, and had
the power to make it settle. I felt
sorry for the forever trapped mini-
sphere; yet with its one perfect
purpose, it was an oracle.
Was it from this drop of air
I thought giving all to one
thing made a human useful?
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A long-tailed tit
inching down a branch
of the willow tree
to reach a suet shell.
She doesn’t mind that I’m
standing right there.
I am peripheral
in a good way.
I try to expel
my humanness
with a held breath.
Her eyes are dots
like poppy seeds.
I’m at rest.
Her small living matters
more than success.
These poems are taken from PN Review 251, January - February 2020. Three more poems by Healey are published in PN Review 270, March - April 2023.