Digital Rabbit Hole

                                          “Deep Roots” by Dale Innis

Deep Roots

In the hazy bogs of my floating sleeping mind
life survives; in the mist even at night
it somehow always survives,
in some form or other it goes on.
Some life is unknown and unseen
too small for our peering eyes
to peek in on and actually perceive
But I imagine how it might be

In the law of this microscopic land,
the sheriff rounds up the most obvious
bad inclinations and they are forever banned.
Supple, goodness is free to flick in watered bliss
it’s like living in floating jello, but colorless
The only color they have ever seen is green
wisps and little legs wrap on to the big green trees
that grow so high,
they’re out of sight,
but for the tiny world below they are
centerpieces, giant landmarks
that mark off whole galaxies
of diminutive cities teeming with life
All can hug them cling and mold to them and be safe
The tiny tiny-life-forms love to discuss
incessantly if they have any end at all
some put forth an idea called infinity
but some are sure they are just finitely tall.

Quite by accident, a teeny complex-cell thing
was scooped up by a fish
who swam to the surface to feed on
Mayflies, who were singing and dying
on top of the water, on their last hurrah
all day and all night.

The minute, minuscule unwilling little thing
was thrown out into the lake,
almost losing its head on
monstrously large, the size of an island,
desperately beating pale pieces of wing.

It looked around, like an astronaut
in discovery of something immense and new;
what it saw was so unfamiliar, so beyond
its shores of limited life lessons
it fainted at the sight of these gargantuan
glowing pods, that lit up the world
in a never before seen, eye wrenching color.

Red.

It was the last thing on its lips,
before falling weighted by lifeless insects
back to the shallow bottom of its universe
it’s ordered, familiar home with green trees
anchored to the murky sands 30 meters below.

Its first thought was, while coming to,
“If I say what I saw, the sheriff
might run me off for being
dangerously delusional.”
and it bit its tongue
never saying a word about those
beacons of red, that flung
their bulging walls wide open…
and there was light.
He hypothesized, when they
drew in onto themselves,
that must be the night.

He never told a single-celled soul
that those trees were just holding
a hundred suns in place, so there could be light
and that was the reason why,
all the itty bitty things, like him
survived in the misty sludge,
at the bottom of their
very polluted lake…even at night.

Karima Hoisan
October 21, 2022
Costa Rica

*Footnote..I think I must have eaten something
very silly for dinner….and behold the consequences:)