Barnacles

I completed this only yesterday, read it at the Poetry and Jam Session at Kipps’ last night, and someone asked if there was somewhere he could read it- so here it is-

                      Barnacles

“I wonder what they do all day”-

“They eat and reproduce”, you say;

“They do not work and cannot play;

All you see is that they stay

Stuck to rocks in this gentle bay.”

“Eat and reproduce- how gay

It sounds; but what a way

To live the life of Riley-

Stuck to a rock while surging waves

O’erwhelm them.” Drily

You admit incomprehension,

A thing you usually choose not to mention.

We  cannot enter a barnacle’s mind.

Even if they had a thing called Mind

We are of such a different kind.

They do not understand the meaning of life

Or bother themselves to ask O, what’s the point?

(And you, no different to a dog sniffing a post –

Though, as you walk into the sea, anoint

Your feet, here on your quasi-spiritual quest,

You realise there’s nothing to record;

And  yet it still must be recorded.