How To Succeed
What is success for a fish?
you may well ask, as in,
how does a fish know
it has climbed the ladder
of… but no no, this is wrong,
fish have no ladders, silly poet,
fish swim and breed and eat and die.
But say someone felt
sorry for the fish, someone heard
(or thought they heard)
the fish secretly cry out
from their fishy hearts, “Oh,
how can we succeed at fish life?
What does it take? We have no
ladder! Woe!” so this someone
in a fit of excessive, nay,
brine-soaked pity, built ladders
for the fish. But they would not
climb, they would not even LOOK!
So the sad pitier of unsuccessful fish
placed skeletal sculpted fish
upon the ladders to give the real fish
the idea. This pitier, this
fish-success artificer, now stands at
the shoreline each day at dawn and dusk,
calling out, “Fish, fish! Here is your ladder!
Do not miss your one chance at
success!” And still,
after all that, the fish
ignore him.
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