Poor Guillaume

Wee fish, fins faltering,

lost in your bowl.

Clearly, sick of dying.

 

Spells of craze;

frantic, dizzy swimming

followed by listless daze.

 

Weak gasping, night and day,

barely living in the grave

gargle of your own decay.

 

Your rotting scales

disintegrating flesh

and morbid time lapses.

 

Pauvre Guillaume.

 

We’ll have no hand

in your last twitch, your end.

The lurching swell and fall

of your tiny lungs and soul

is a breathless secret told

between a fish and its God.

 

Ainsi soit-il. Amen.