Tyrone, R.I.P.

[Bonnie Surfus (ENG)]

to anyone who followed the saga of my sick fish, Tyrone, I have some sad 
news.  He's gone.

A-and the sick think is that I've been forced to think of it, after much 
initial sadness and mixed with lingering feelings of guilt, in terms of GR.

First, there was my mother telling me to "flush him down the toilet," an 
eerie thought, in context.  Next, when I find him this morning, he's not 
floating, like most fish that die, but laying at the bottom of the tank, 
but, yes, definitely dead (I checked as best I could.)  Finally, not 
really knowing what to do with him, I decided to go ahead with mother's 
initial suggestion.  Wrong?  Sick?  I didn't know the protocol for 
disposing of deceased and formerly beloved fish, so I did it, flushed him.

Finally, I added additional stanzas to a poem I'd written about his 
illness, about a month ago.  Feel free to move on if this is the silliest 
thing you've ever heard of.  

Anway, here goes:

"On the Death of my beloved, Tyrone"

Tyrone has this eye,
big as a fish,
in bas relief.
It is my wish
to no longer see
that upon me
his gaze should seem
so melancholy.

Tyrone, you see
habitially laying
on his stony bed.
And to be fed,
it is for he,
not I,
to try to catch the fly.

Well, no, not flies,
an easy rhyme.
It's worms for he.
This worries me
to see his laying,
never trying 
for the surface eagerly.

Mother says
to spare the pain
of belly-upping.
Me essaying 
on the virtue of a fish
is really for her
something which
begs attention,
"don't you see,"
she says,
"you'll have to set him free;
he's without joy, let
him go swimming
down the toilet."

But Fate?  It was for Destiny
to write Tyrone's itiner'ry,
and so he's gone 
on down the drain . . .

. . . Inside the tank,
his ghostly reign,
it holds a vacant, empty space,
where few could dare
presume t'replace
Tryone-emous, his majesty,
for whom I write this eulogy,
and ending not in parody,
but in homage,
respectfully:

I think that I shall never see
the rainbowed edge of gravity,
and as your name prophetically,
predicts the end in tragedy:
You left me.

But though your namesake
nods to Newton,
you never did 
commence disputin',
on the surface
never found,
your gills unmoving,
belly round.

I'll ponder not
this eerie sense,
these couplets of coincidence.
Literary prophecies
are best left to Diogenes,
who searched long and hard
for one wise man,
lantern held high
in his hand.
But poor old Di'
he never knew
that 'twas a fish
of gold and blue
could consecrate our sacred laws,
Newton exposed for his flaws.

And so, "who's wise?"
Tyrone, in spirit,
asks of those 
who cannot hear it,
wondering if we'll ever see
a version of reality
that fits.

--Bonnie Lenore Surfus


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