This Pesty Fly

When you had a smaller daughter,

You used to read her Eric Carle.

In The Very Busy Spider

Denouement, his busy spider,

Who’s been building her web all book,

Completes it, then catches a fly.

Each time you spoke it to daughter,

There was one word from a rooster,

Inviting the busy spider

To dine on the fly, caught your eye.

That colorful rooster noticed,

Not an annoying, pesky fly,

But, rather grandly, a pesty fly.

Who could ignore a pesty fly?

Tonight, a few weeks after Carle,

Cherished to a ripe old age, died,

You sat out in the liminal,

Luminal evening of the first

Day of September while bothered

By one determined pesty fly,

As you tried to compose your lines,

Which made you think of Eric Carle,

And change those lines and add more lines

In memory of his writing

And the art of one small word caught,

Just so, just strange enough to make

A reader remember and long

For the spider to eat the fly.