Tag Archives: fruit flies

Semi-formal poem: Susan de Sola, ‘Bounty’

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The fruit flies find our fruit, they slip
beneath the lid, a silver dome.
The dark fruit scent has drawn them in,
no other lures them out again.
They settle on apples, puckered figs,
they gorge in perpetuity,
may never fly back to their home,
(if they have ever had a home).
An allegory of choice? Well, yes–
in that we have no choice.
The fruit is fine, the day is long.
Let us feed, buzz, rejoice.

*****

Susan de Sola was a native New Yorker who earned a PhD in English Literature at Johns Hopkins, took a job at Amsterdam University… and stayed, married, raised five children. Published in the Hudson Review, PN Review, and The Dark Horse, she won the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize and the Frost Farm Prize. Her less serious work appeared in Snakeskin, Light, Lighten Up Online, and a couple of her poems were reprinted in Potcake Chapbooks. She was widely loved for her creativity, warmth, and sense of fun. She died from lymphoma in 2021, age 59.

‘Bounty’ is the final poem in her only published collection, Frozen Charlotte, published by Able Muse Press in 2019.

Photo: “Fruit flies from fig” by Alejandro Erickson is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

R.I.P. Susan de Sola

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Wonderfully warm and witty poet Susan de Sola passed away last week after a short battle with cancer–she was only 59, very active, and had recently published ‘Frozen Charlotte‘ with Able Muse Press. Tributes in Snakeskin’s blog and Light Poetry Magazine have shown some of her charming, amusing work.

Her work appeared in a couple of the Potcake Chapbooks–‘Family and Other Fiascoes’ and ‘Strip Down’–but I think the most fitting poem for showing her spirit is the last poem in ‘Frozen Charlotte’. She likens the lives of humans to the brief lives of fruit flies and ends, acceptingly, with
“The fruit is fine, the day is long.
Let us feed, buzz, rejoice.”

Indeed. But many of us miss you, all the same.