Anchoring and delimiting

I cast anchor with a long, long chain,
it hardly anchored anything at all

I cast anchor with a short, short chain, it anchored pretty well and I was nearly drowned

I cast an anchor with no chain at all,
it anchored just itself, and strictly nothing else

the anchor was a stone I choosed to pick around, and the chain had a look of human artifact

I questioned the stone about its feelings

the stone didn't know it could be an anchor, it didn't even know that it was a stone, and other stones around didn't care more

while nobody thought of questioning the chain

-Pierre Deleporte, Université de Rennes, Station Biologique de Paimpont, France,
"playing deliberately evasive methaphors [sic] game" concerning the differentiation between species entity, a species concept and species name. Originally posted to TAXACOM listserv, 10 Sep 2009.