after Aesop

Are you my end? The moral of my fable?
It’s coming soon, I feel it. All one’s life
spent leading to The End. The farmer’s table,
the cheese not taken, and the blinding knife,
to snap shut here. With you. Some trap I’m in.
And from such proud beginnings, too! The mountain
was my mother. (The hen’s jewel is my kin.)
A life in lessons. Priestly, yes? (Discounting
some faults—but every lion has its thorn:
I did not volunteer to bell the tom;
the frog was not my friend.) A fame far-reaching
may yet be mine. Perhaps I shall be, from
this tomb of mice—this womb of pearls—reborn
and shine on as a gem of moral teaching.