LEE ROSSI
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Plain Jain
When Sally the goldfish died my daughter exploded,
a four-year-old volcano, hurling puzzle pieces, plastic cows,
spoons and her brother’s pancake miles into the air.
Only the promise of another Sally calmed
the eruption, allowing the tiny village of domestic
tranquility to begin the rebuilding process.
“Where did she go?” my daughter wanted to know,
and so my wife, with greater love perhaps than wisdom,
told how the real, spiritual Sally had propellered upstream
to that great spawning ground in the sky
where even now she was waiting for another body.
After breakfast we buried Sally’s former mobile home,
and drove to the pet shop to buy Little Sally.
But now that she knows that spirit can disappear
as easily as water down a drain, my daughter
takes care with the creatures in and around the house.
When mice invaded, she wouldn’t let us put out traps,
even after mom explained that they only kill the body,
not the soul. And so I dump dead mice surreptitiously
over the fence into my neighbor’s yard, thinking
of this trap called marriage, how twice before I escaped
with only my body, almost none of my soul.