AFTERNOON SHAFT
by Joanna Gilman Hyde
The Tomato-coloured Couch 3:35pm
After making love with My Husband
After making a macaroni casserole
I sit in A Shaft Of Light
on The Tomato-coloured Couch
I flip through a Gucci catalogue
& listen to 90’s on 9
abandoning DHW
at least for now
–
He gave Me That Number
10:22
October 22, 1993
I have built a construct of living
around That Number, That Date
–
A Housefly flies into The Shaft
glinting like A Firefly
Joanna Gilman Hyde 
This piece works well, I think.
Thank you Ben. I thought maybe it was one of my lesser ones.
The closing image casts fresh light on the previous stanza and invite the reader, hopefully, to pull back and review the whole piece, and indeed the writer’s whole life, in which that one specific moment of illumination, that shaft of light, configured all the rest. Or at least that is how I am reading it.
Thank you very much for your observations. Where would I have been without that fly?
Where would the fly have been without you?
Gee, Ben, you’re awfully nice to me.
I was addressing you in your divine capacity here. 😉