2

Like a fish out of water he drank daily like his gills were overflowing with useless objects and sentimental sludge that gummed up the gutters of the reservoir I see the sea to me means that a vast ocean is reached at the end a meeting of the all and the one like streams to tributaries and mingling in the river trivially where all curls and eddies a standing wave Eddy is a stranded boy in the water a lifeguard pulls him out of the pool freshwater in his mouth again drowning but this time strong arms reach out this grab pulled frog legged and amphibious crawling up the shore a variety of legs and maneuvers shed scales said he I am a man how? I was a fish, but when? Yesterday. I was a fish in the stream, then I was a man. What happened in between I could not tell but it was invisible incredible excellent unbelievable I would believe you ah don’t be so sure you see I was many before, many many minnows, then a cluster of carp, then a batch of beavers building a dam then a bear ate me and I was the bear and the bear fell and frogs hatched from it’s stomach and from that the frogs were picked at by birds who carried and shat eggs from the sky most of which fell from the fire in the sky to the frying pan that stretches out beneath on a magma hob the flow of current forwards always sometimes stuck and sometimes pushing through the dam the damage done outstanding ripped wood floating raftlike and covered in ants that march away away as a kite away as a raft and I was the real me finally with toes made of toad and legs of lamb and minty mouth and earwig eyebrows and horsehair and monkey mouth too and aardvark arms all of me these animals I was and am but now a man of the sudden burst of tremendous shaking an earthquake that the sea pushes forth an earthquake shattering itself breaking it must render it’s fatal it’s final is this the way the current goes can I see the sea it’s all that you can see I see you see not really where were we blah oh yes the river that delivered me to you through the evolutionary mess a tangled tree drinking from the earth and reaching to the sky don’t ask why it just is don’t ask where the leaves draw from they grow great and green from the ground but where from the air the earth where else the ether if you will I will okay then so it is as you are as we are they see how now but where does it go back the other way or through as a needle in the eye of time a fabric warped in space all of which flows this river revised and relevant to the reproduction of itself stitched together stuck and allowed to continue undistorted undemanded producing oi ok I went on a boat it was good that’s more like it yeah and then got off the other side and went for a walk in the woods and then I died and that was it.