POEM: Piscine Metaphysics [Prose Poem]

Looking at the water's surface, seeing the reflection on display, a fuzzy and easily perturbed version of the trees beside and clouds above, I feel the watery world is less real than my own.

Then I consider the fish. At best, the fish sees those trees and clouds as a hazy and rippling representation, dim or, perhaps, shimmering. On the other hand, I suspect the fish sees the yellowed bases of the cat's tail stalks and the rumpled car that a teenager drove into the lake twenty years ago in high-definition clarity, though I cannot see those things even with my nose to the water.

As my intraspecific conceit can only stretch so far, I'm left with the reassuring (or disconcerting) realization that all of it is equally real (or none of it is real at all.)