We've been inscribed in animals for as
long as we could draw them,
we seem to show our exception
by the breath we fill them with
to pipe out our words,
but really all we do is show
ourselves as unexceptionable.
We still don't know how the eels
get back to the sea from the river
and if they even die there,
we just assume they do.
And when the eels are gone
and the cats too,
kind words of
love are piped back and forth
between us,
also showing us as unexceptional,
because those words are not the
words of the anthropomorphised
they are ours and ours alone
and all we have since
we really don't know
when to help, where best to help
with the journey back to the sea
from the river,
and this shows we can't ever know
how death is best served
and that a child must live
knowing that what's next
is unknowable
or it's peering out from up high
at a queue at the bus stop
or it's just lazing in a sunbeam
quietly watching,
taking it all in,
the people,
watch, The Professor, watch
look at
the people go by.