WE AIN'T SO TOUGH

We like to think
we can fade anything.
Nothing's
too difficult
for us
humans
to conceive of
or do.
Perhaps?...

I prefer
the wolf
trapped
in steel
& chews
his foot off
without asking
for sympathy
or Zoloft;
or a three-legged
dog jogging; or
a wordless sparrow
in the Hawk's eye
with clipped wing
& a bread crumb
happy in the sun.
I've not seen
a mean mother elephant
nuzzling a dumb calf
or a lionness humiliate
her cub.
No flower I know
has hid
from the sun;
or a beetle
refuse dung.

We have too much
& so too little.
The eye
on the pyramid's dollar
blind and baffled
by good fortune.
It seems we've got
Nature's sequence
wrong. All
wrong.
Our memorial
to our wars
is above ground
not under it.

Norman Savage
Greenwich Village, 2015