The Thought Salmon

No one need instruct me on the reasoning for suffering
just as no one need explain the salmon
who fell from the sky.
Remain behind the yellow line,
we were asked. But our thoughts
rubbed at patio windows,
they barked at odd hours.
There was a rustle in the undergrowth;
afterward our thoughts were absent altogether.
Gazing on our freshly raspberried bushes,
only a cup of tea occupied us.
A short time after, the salmon died,
and our thoughts eventually returned. Slowly
and unsurely, tails tucked between their legs.
Thoughts of diaphanous fauna;
children frozen to dipods in the park;
the colossus who wanders your world
and taps the saints to sleep.
Thoughts of optical effects,
imaginings seen in Tupperware;
then the salmon, who’d appeared again.
The sink this time.
A thought begins in the wild,
said the salmon, and lures us by bits of bread.
When we arrive at its cottage,
we may smell a scent of sugar and incense.
It may lay a coarse hand across our shoulder.
In those days, you could watch yourself
as a cowl and haircut bobbing along an avenue.
You could hear anyone
wondering on what mercy was.
And was it out of mercy
that the salmon ascended?
At funerals,
they say take off your hat,
but no one is wearing a hat.
So, you tap your head where you think
a thought might muster.
You imagine a bugle is blown.