The dictionary definition of change
means your face looks different in the water
& even tho’ you’d feel at home down there
each moment spent at one remove, anywhere
between the mammal & the sponge,
you know you’d miss a particular cassette
idle tears or a glass of gin
& be irked by the serious options
a changeless life presents e.g. ‘Minor
poet, conspicuously dishonest’ would look funny
on a plaque screwed to a tree
while the blue trace of your former life
suggests an exception
generations will end up chanting: for them
the parts of speech will need explaining
                         not lakes or sleep or sex,
or the dumb poets of the past
who, being lyrical, missed out on this.