Reena’s Exploration Challenge # 124

Reena is the host of Reena’s Exploration Challenge.

Welcome back to another week!

I had a tough time getting a pesky fly out of the house today. In the process, I came to admire her incorrigible optimism.

Here’s a poem by Lisel Mueller

IMMORTALITY
In Sleeping Beauty’s castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don’t even rub their eyes.
The cook’s right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy’s left ear;
the boy’s tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie,
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.

As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can’t be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly;
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and lifespan of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.

PROMPT

Does this poem inspire a chain of thoughts? It is not just about the fly. What else could have happened during those hundred years? Did the inhabitants of the house really like the world after a century- post-modern, post-truth, post-illusions of AR & VR? Could it be a back-to-humanity world after an era of being ruled by robots?

Let your imagination run amok. May the scenarios you paint inspire a composite piece of art or literature!

~*~*~*~

The wheel of time just never stops

Tic-tock tic–tock the hands go relentlessly

Try stopping it, try jumping ahead or back

Craning our neck we look back and see our past

We color it with beautiful hues with wishes true and imagined

Or stand on our tip toes we wish a glimpse of tomorrow

Wanting to know, yet dread to find out what will be

The refrain of a song stirs the airwaves

Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be”

The moment we live in, the now, this instant

That is the most important time we will ever have

This is our time to do, to achieve, to excel

Don’t be concerned with what went before us

Or what will come after we have gone

Grab the moment with both hands

And make it the best that you ever can

~*~*~*~*~

#Keepitalive

#ReenasExplorationChallenge