Examining the Alternatives

We wanted to be the temporary gray of an afternoon shower, a gentleman’s trousers. Instead we collectively became a rhinoceros, our weight impressing the bottom of a pond. Fish took our legs for submerged trunks, bedded between our knees. We felt obligated to stay put until the eggs hatched. Our only desire was to be a Ferris wheel’s gears, our teeth gnawing families into the air, helping them look down on light. We became a donkey’s jawbone, broke and healed crooked. We inherited the legacy of bones. Cleaned. Bleached. Testified to the ability of structure to defy hunger. Surely someone snatched us up and wielded us and slung us into a swamp where we lodged in the silence that quiets cypresses. We aspired to become personal floatation devices dry rotting in the bottom of a john boat. Only then could we repeat the lessons of exposure. We became a rusted drain in a claw-footed tub, the sieve that delivers fish from floods.