Flies Won't Mate in a Petri Dish

Creative Commons 2.0

Sometime this past week, one of the articles I was reading--and I can't recall which or where or by whom--included this sentence: "Flies won't mate in a petri dish." For some reason the statement was so unusual and intriguing that I scribbled it down and typed it into a "Notes" file. 

A few days later I noticed that I had included several paragraphs of text. Was this a cut-and-paste from the article or were they my own original words? The beginning of a blog post or a story? I knew that the last part came from my own observations about sterile work environments. However, rather than be guilty of plagiarism I decided instead to turn the core elements of the article into a poem, smitten by an urge to create.

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Flies Won’t Mate in a Petri Dish

Beneath the hum of sterile light,

Gleams a petri dish, cold and tight—

A cage of glass, pristine, severe,

With trapped flies buzzing there in fear.

Wings slice air, iridescent, bold,

Even so, no courtship dance unfolds.

No rot, no breeze, no wild decay,

Just a void where instincts fray.  

Dr. Voss, standing mute with trembling hand,

Dreams of strains of fly she’s deftly planned—

Glowing genes, a perfect breed,

But the flies defy her sterile creed.

“Too clean,” she sighs, “too pure, too still,”

Chaos, not order, spurs their will.

In meadows rank with ferment’s call,

They’d mate—not here, they scorn the wall.  

With a sprinkle of mold and a desperate plea,

Antennae twitch, the flies dance with glee.

The dish, once tyrant, hums alive,

Proving life in mess will always thrive.

Utopians chase their polished dream,

A world too smooth, a muted gleam—

Like flies, we shun the sealed design,

For in the stink, the soul aligns.  

Office tombs with all their windows shut,

Oppress the heart, the spirit cut.

Perfection falters, hollow, bare,

While struggle breeds what’s raw and rare.

From petri prisons to grand ideals,

The flawed, the real, is the thing that heals—

Flies and men, in chaos free,

Find love where life is meant to be.  

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