Crazy Fishes

If I walked in circles

Continually going around and around

Thinking that it all leads somewhere significant

Just to find that circles are infinite,

could you forgive me indefinitely even if

I find myself hitting that same bump in the road?

Does the goldfish count meticulously

How many times it circles around

Or swims up and down?

Are their heads made of calculators

Counting how many times

They see the same place for the first time?

The calendar on the wall reminds me

That I've seen May 5 eighteen different times.

Though im doing it differently this round

my mind is on the lap I ran before.

With my journals its easy to look back

At the course I've been running so long.

Reminiscing on things I should've said

All the things I've done wrong.

How similar each year is, in perspective.

The flowers still bloom. The sun still rises.

Each time a memory floats up

From the pit in my stomach,

like dead fish In a poisoned lake,

I wonder how many times I'll make this round.

Revisit all this hate.

Could you forgive my inability

To stop calculators in my head?

Would you still read the poems

That are about the same damn thing

Just differently said?

Does the goldfish ever grow weary

Of counting each time it goes around?

Is that why it crawls out onto the carpet

To lay with the lint and the ladybugs,

Or does the cat coerce it out?