Poem: "The Fish That People Don't See"
This poem came out of the March 5, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from tomtac. It also fills the "17) cladistics" slot on the Vellum list for the Rainbowfic fest. This poem has been sponsored by Shirley Barrette. It belongs to the series Monster House. You can read more about black smokers and bubble-eye goldfish online.
The Fish That People Don't See
Most people don't understand
what I see in the alien aquarium.
To them it just looks like a lava lamp
whose red-violet fluid clashes
with its yellow-green wax.
The Eye of Fate shows me
the strangely shifting shapes
of the hyperspace aliens,
long flowing veils of fins and tails
like chartreuse curtains,
their faces like bubble-eye goldfish,
only their eyes poking through
into this dimension.
Once in a while,
somebody sees them blink.
I wondered why anybody
would want to live in an aquarium
but Grandma just laughed
and explained that they were
studying the cladistics of the Earth
and how all creatures were related,
from plants to people,
from epiphytes at the top of a rainforest
to the giant tube worms of black smokers.
Sometimes it's not about
how you can be seen,
but about what you can see.