The Black Flies of Home
by Brock Dethier
Black flies dance in the air
between my head and my brother’s,
distorting the view. We sit on pinkish granite
smoothed and sloped by retreating glaciers
ten millennia ago. Below us,
the Rocky Branch of the Saco River,
then the ridge that leads from Stanton and Pickering
all the way up to Davis, Isolation, and Washington itself.
Farther west, the ski trail scars of Mt. Attitash,
still the new ski area,
though it opened in 1965.
Black flies are small, hard to see, quiet.
They like warm sheltered places--
behind your ear or knee.
They follow the blood
others have left. And bite.
I react with large hard itchy welts
that I scratch bloody in my sleep.
Mosquitoes are everywhere but I’ve never seen black flies
outside New England,
so their presence is a special “welcome home!” to the region.
Around us, blueberry bushes with subtle flowers--
little cream bells that will become
the fruit of the New Hampshire gods--
rhodora about to brighten the ledges
with cerise blossoms,
grus eroded from the ledges
filling the cracks between them,
sweet fern. I wasn’t aware of being bitten
but I find blood behind my ear.
Within our view, we’ve skied
both downhill and cross country,
canoed, floated, kayaked, swam,
hiked of course. We were born
just out of sight to the left.
We’ve come in search of iron mines
and leave with sparkly ore,
black fly bumps starting to itch,
and a few crystals
to take back west to what still seems after 26 years
a temporary home.
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Few who have experienced New England’s black flies would argue that they make the world a better place, yet for people who have grown up with them, the flies mean home. Having spent half my life in New England and half in Utah, I’m interested in how we think about “home,” and this unpublished, personal poem tries to illuminate the complexities of the concept and to highlight the irony that sometimes what bugs you may come to signify home for you.
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BROCK DETHIER retired from Utah State University after directing the writing composition program for 11 years. His publications include From Dylan to Donne: Bridging English and Music (Heinemann, 2003), First Time Up: An Insider’s Guide for New Composition Teachers (Utah State University Press, 2005), Twenty-One Genres and How to Write Them (Utah State University Press, 2013), and two books of poetry, Ancestor Worship (Pudding House Publications, 2008) and Reclamation (Popcorn Press, 2015).