(a life imagined)
Call me crazy, he says (so I do),
I’m going to give the fish back to the shop.
Red, and Eleven, abandoned to the pet store tanks
by their adoptive father
who loves them too much
to see them suffer, and slowly die
in the filter-less tank,
(the glass bowl bought to grow the waterlily
picked from the lake near the country winery
that windy Sunday afternoon),
the glass bowl with the oxygen
fast running out in the water.
Eleven: two slim, White Cloud minnows,
bought to eat mosquito lavae;
Red the Goldfish bought for his beauty.
In the Jeep on the way home I had held Red up
in his plastic bag of filtered water
to see the view; he would never
pass this way again, I declared,
but I was wrong, Red will look out this time,
and come back proud, returning
to his familiar Pet Store home
to boast of his adventures,
to the brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts
gathered round: the ride in the new Jeep,
the land flashing by, the brief distant hills,
the white kitchen bench, the view
of the coffee machine, the real life water lily
and his two small, un-talkative neighbours
family for a brief moment,
bedfellows for a night.
In coming weeks these things will visit him as a dream;
tales will be passed down
legends will build, assuming mythological status
fables greatly embellished,
providing schools of bedtime stories
for generations of baby goldfish to come.
