Catfish Laments

Walls of it
banks of it
rolling airborne moisture
is enough to wet these gills
and their pulsing red was pulse for you
An icthic shift of tense
from "being" to "having been" to "used to be"
I am motile
I am walking
across the highway

At the bottom of the aquarium
I am hiding behind the colorful gravel,
wedged behind the aerator,
upside down
Angels and tetras flash angular
but I am smoothly still
and remain so
even when the fingers tap our walls
When we are fed
I am waiting
whiskers stiff for the shreds that settle
down through solution

This place is porcelain
and we writhe within it, shallow
in memory of deep rivers
light laddered waters
and powerless against hooks and lines
how we rose confused and angry
to gasp against a thing called sky
above again ourselves