Sucker Shark

I don't know whether anyone still remembers the poem about the monkey crossing the river, which seemed to say a lot about the education system.

Well, here's another poem by the same poet, Thomas Lux. It has a tone very like the first, and yet a totally different colour.

Remora, Remora

Clinging to the shark
is a sucker shark,
attached to which
and feeding off its crumbs
is one still tinier,
inch or two,
and on top of that one,
one the size of a nick of gauze;
smaller and smaller
(moron, idiot, imbecile, nincompoop)
until on top of that
is the last, a microdot sucker shark,
a filament’s tip – with a heartbeat – sliced off,
and the great sea
all around feeding
his host and thus him.
He’s too small
to be eaten himself
(though some things swim
with open mouths) so
he just rides along in the blue current,
the invisible point of the pyramid,
the top beneath all else.

It seems to say something else about more or less the same thing. Heh.

=====

Note: Hmm. The Library of Congress 'Poetry 180' site rotates poems in and out, so the links might not work after a few months. Get it now while you can. But there are a lot of other nice poems there too!