Osmosis

Osmosis 

They're sleeping through the third conditional
and later they will snooze right past the passive voice.

Nestled in baskets of warm slumber, they will float
down rivers of relative clauses, drift  

from one island of conjunctions to the next
ignorant of indirect objects and causal agents,

or the correct usage of these punctuation marks
alighting from branches forever beyond their reach. 

An occasional rule might edge through a crack,
slide across their unconsciousness

like moonlight on an attic floor. Some time
in the future it will reveal itself unexpectedly

wedged between the capital of Iceland
and the name of Henry the Eighth's fourth wife,

but for the most part language will remain 
a note slipped quietly under the door

and they will sleepwalk through life oblivious 
to why knife is spelled with a letter K. 

~

Appears in Orbis #157