The Beaver of Mankind

The geese step straight winged

through southbound fleece,

a humming triangle on collective memory's leash.

Below buzzing clouds,

pseudo-intellectual sheep

clutch the honking shepard's

nudging staff:

eat here, not there,

he thinks by day.

They masticate the philosophy

of grazing grass.

Night grows a belly

slithering the wolf's circle,

darkness pants an upwind mask,

lust's eye rising to spy

one weak white throat,

hope yelping future's bloody lamb,

instinct's crouching mouth

whispering,

kill,

kill,

kill.

Scent nips the genius

of dog's nose,

swift bleat of paws,

cocking jaws to hoot

his inborn need to warn,

be gone from here or face my bite

A pebble of light herds dawn,

sun's bull's eye

strikes the rooster's beak,

compulsive in his hissing thrall,

to screech the waking hour

against red barnyard walls,

grouchy mice in hay stacked stalls,

skinny tails curled

whinny out, shut up!

But man's pecked eyes open,

to finally feed those in his keeping.

Among clumps of fly gnawed dung,

the hungry mare snarls

rooting at stall's door,

her snorting ears pull back

to show her displeased teeth,

‘til grain dumps in her bucket

and green pastures lure,

her sidewinding hooves,

cramped corkscrew tail

falls loose to swish,

the running haunch of endless fence.

I can't be free,

she doesn't think,

the human hand that holds the bit.

In fields the creek slinks low,

through swaybacked grasses

slow lions march single file-

tooth to tail,

trumpeting pride in ancestral territory

past the strutting bravado

of a yammering matriarch;

her warren of monkeys hopping

lilypad's perch to lofty limb,

fur bristling puffed up fists spitting,

the clatter of tree climbing

tongues quick to claim

evolution's golden touch-

but once the cats' sluggish parade passes,

they return to nibbling

found fleas leaping in each other's fur.

Deep between roots in a Banyan,

a passel of cackling owls,

poke droning horns,

piercing the predatory air

in protective watch over freshly spawned buds,

bursting like bubbles

within googly-eyed tufts

of twigs and feathers;

mother's nest of mole bones

meticulously assembled by nature.

In a nearby river,

Man paddles;

a bundle of wood balanced on his head,

building an addition to his underwater lodge,

he lisps his buck-toothed invitation:

a barbeque next Saturday.

Fat neighborhood fish,

waddle past him whooping,

laughing fins.

Discouraged,

he scampers onto the banks,

his cell phone held between his teeth,

paws sniffing into damp earth for grubs,

but, by next Saturday,

he'll have had it

with this dam's nature business-

failing at being an animal,

he'll employ his superior intellect

and order a pizza.

.