The creature

One afternoon, near the sandy river bank
I met a creature of the strangest kind
You might mistake it for a huge roly-poly,
at the very first glance.
But instead of crawling or rolling into a ball,
upright it stands!
Look at its many, I mean MANY hands:
each sits on an arm
that is soft and flaccid like a rubber band
oh, the finger, which looks like a party blow out
only one such finger on each hand:
when curled up it looks like zero
when blew out it looks like one

Where does it come from?
Is it another planet like Saturn
or another country like Sudan?
This thought reminded myself to go home
as I ran, the creature followed behind
Wait, is it too lonely
or it treats me as a friend?
Maybe I can bring it home
maybe I can help it to reunite with its own kind
So I did and learned so much about the creature
that surprised me again and again

It doesn’t talk our talk but it know signs
when a door closed, it extended its finger zero
when the door opened, it extended its finger one.
Same with the flag on the mail box:
when the flag was down, its finger zero
when the flag up, its finger one
As I doing things and going places
it kept changing its fingers and hands
as if it understands
as if it’s trying to communicate with me
with patterns of zero and ones

So I went on to test my hypothesis by experiment:
I extended three of my fingers
The creature did the same with three of its hands
each with the finger one extended
perfectly aligned along a straight line
Then I showed it five pieces of pecans
It responded with five hands
each with the finger one extended
perfectly aligned along a straight line

The strangest thing is yet to come
as I later find
One day when I check on it
its hand grew or should I say, expanded?
The one segment arm split into two
and there were some new arms
with only one segment