The Rhino

I once saw a rhino in a zoo
And they told me that his cage
Had been expanded
His universe was arbitrarily
Grown out past its edges
That options vectored tangentially
To all infinite points
On the circle that
Until yesterday
Defined his parabolic life and
Hyperbolic limb
An augmented reality
A superior potential

I thought to myself
I would sing of running
And roaming
I would ply the wind with my great horn
Sniffing and scratching the ground
Falling through grass and air and time
And I would be large
And banish the smallness
Of belief illuminated by knowledge
Into memory
Raised to a new power
I would see the true dimension of my history
Take it in my hands
And press it between pages
And move into the light
Of presence that
Contains me and so much more

And maybe in my rhino mind
Would flicker a twist
Synaptic “Hallelujah”
A lightning flash
The once occluded path, like a string of pearls
A fractal algorithm
Infinitely recursive
A soup of light and shadow
Each drop a where / when
The spoon mere inches
From my hand

Who’m I kidding?
All see as through a glass darkly
Sift through perceived reality
Laughing or crying or raging
as through a class drunkly
hoping we can pretend it's just a movie
begging some weird ignorant interpretation
of a God that lies outside this twisted perception
to cut some deal that seems like absolution
Believing self and cage to be the same
Just like that poor rhino
Treading a dirt circle
In a wide meadow