They made their home within a concrete sanctuary
Some adapted appendages and other parts of human skin
To better interface with their watery brethren
One small girl I noticed had a dorsal fin
Another filtered nourishment from a swim
These people were the most unusual I have seen
And yet to them, their world seemed quite ordinary
The mustached man became my friend
We were scientists with an interest in languages
To teach cetaceans how to speak our English
We built them liquid homes where we would wade
To dictate them our vowels and consonants
They would chirp like parrots from their beaks
In the end, they and we learned nearly nothing
When it was time to leave, they swirled in reds and blues and oranges
A clockwork of shimmering splashing, rising and falling
And carried us through the narrow passage to the bay
Until they disappeared, exhausted, beneath the waves
S. Rogers Ellis has been published in Boston Review, High Plains Literary Review, Pequod, Midwest Quarterly and The Round. He has work forthcoming in The MacGuffin. He works as a software engineer and lives in New York.
Euphony Journal 