Lobster Rain

A eulogy on the car radio: he was a good friend to all. It begins to rain. On the road an opossum family, bodies strewn according to size and age, some pancaked, some playing dead forever. A lobster gave up its existence for me, was boiled alive for me. I did not hear it scream, but a dog began to bark and would not stop. The red and black restaurant yaws like a Spanish galleon, rain splatters windows, the booth plunges through the wake of a stormy squall. A seagull crashes into a porthole, not here, yet I hear the wet, red splutter of its drowning. I imagine it is raining inside the restaurant lobster eyes follow me out, they drill small black pinholes into the back of my mind. Driving home. The radio: The rain will end everywhere shortly. When the rain doesn't stop no one says anything. They are making plans for the funeral of a great man, again they say that he was a friend to all; few had anything bad to say, few knew him. Dead birds litter the roadside, The sky is racing too fast to be read. Nobody has mentioned the dead birds, the weird sky. A lack of context crawls around in a glass tank unable to explain a thing. Later that night I overhear hermit crabs broadcasting lies into their empty shells.