IN CROWDED ARCANIA

Wandering bugs cannot know
as they scuttle pit-a-pat
over a composting jungle floor,
crawl and fly up stem and trunk
rising into more edible green,
their mission is feeding themselves
to bird and reptile, mantis and spider
and random mammal insectivore,
some fraction surviving to pre-conceive
the number required for another season
of relentless predatory work by everyone
all food-chained together as innocents
digesting trillions of micro-neuron cells
evolving thresholds of involute change,
opening a mutant brain to another germ
of self-conscious thought into power,
till one child of a Pliocene tribe,
delerious in dread of stealthy fang and claw
and guilty with knowledge of good and evil,
interrupts their grim munching on cannibal fruit
to plead they stop and answer the question "WHY
must we sharpen our tools to kill and probe
the bloody secrets of war and possession -
would you track the hunting trails
of Sun, Moon and Stars ( ?! )"




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John Talbot Ross