THE PHILOSOPHER WITH HAIRY LEGS by MICHAEL MINASSIAN’

When the door to the bar opened,
a fly snuck in, circling lazily.

Later, he landed on the bottles
behind the bar, pausing to check

his reflection in the mirror,
rubbing hairy legs together.

I watched the slow parade of evolution
stuck in a pretense of thought —

unable to speak, lacking teeth, 
possessing a tongue shaped like a straw,

he grew tired of his own reflection, 
buzzing twice past my ear

on his way out the door—
An open mind, philosophers say, 

is a virtue as long as we
don’t open it too wide,

letting in every bad idea—
rationality a better filter

than whatever compels 
a fly to stumble indoors.

MICHAEL MINASSIAN’s is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His chapbooks include poetry: The Arboriculturist and photography: Around the Bend. His poetry collections, Time is Not a River and Morning Calm are both available on Amazon. His poetry manuscript A Matter of Timing won the 2020 Poetry Society of Texas’ Manuscript Contest. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com