Lenten Sonnet #35

Aquarium

The surviving fish in his algae-occluded

Universe glimmers goldenly among the dim

Nodding plants – all plastic – whose furred fronds salute him

As he twitches past. His unnatural solitude

Makes him anxious. He is waiting, always, for food

To dimple the clear elastic sky above him,

Shivering in the filter’s wind. He does not swim

For love of swimming. Fish who stop swimming are dead –

He does not know this, exactly, but feels its truth

Propel him forward, forward, and around, around,

Alone in his eternal fluorescent-lit day,

Except that two snails are always grazing their smooth,

Uncompanionable way across the lush ground

Of the brown-green glass, each solitarily gray.