Together you and I, we watch the making of cake,

A cake that might look like itself or its doppelgänger

Or even a toad-on-purpose, not a toad-as-comparison;

They’re experts, the people we’re watching

And they’d only make a toad it they meant to,

They’d make a toad with a reasonable facsimile

Of its anatomy, its heart three-chambered, more or less

Efficient than our own, if you consider how untroubled

Toads are by break-ups, taxes, cruelty, if you consider

The 250 million years they have on us. How little it weighs

Upon them, those layered eons. Cake is being made, cake

Is a toad or not, we’re not going to eat it. Our mouths

Are made redundant but we watch. Our eyes could be on stalks,

Heliotrope, ready to breach the screen, to see what must be real.