[lit-ideas] SUNDAY POEM
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2008 16:24:13 -0500
THINKING OF WHITMAN AT 65
"I think I could trurn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contained"
-- Walt Whitman
So much of the lives of animals
is lived in sheer terror.
Sight and scent and sound
are the bearers less of pleasure
than a measure of predators --
life's all too eager editors.
But for bombing raids in times of war
or while walking down certain streets at night,
we human types forget the fright
of being prey
day and night,
night and day.
But we in our temerity
are no less at risk at every moment
than the wee
tim'rous beastie.
Seas heave, winds whirl, rivers rage,
ground buckles up and down,
so, too, do all the tissues of our bodies.
Mistakes are made in scripts,
Scribes in their cells copy what they see
not knowing it'll turn out to be
a death decree.
And so it goes.
Literature lies.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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