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Small Life
There are killings,
suffocation in gullet
hell holes, decapitations
by mandibles stalking in shadows,
death pits at the bottom
of slippery throated flowers
and racked on a web,
a struggling moth
slowly turning into soup.
My garden is a slaughter
field littered with the leftovers
from deadly feasts.
And the victims….what
of their inaudible cries,
the screams broadcast
on wavelengths beyond
my ear. Do they plead
for mercy, feel pain
register in whatever
rudimentary brain animates
their brief lives.
Help me ! Please help me !
does the moth cry,
feeling the spiders fangs
penetrate and pump poison
into its trussed body.
Or do I give such
small life undue significance
affording it compassion
when it should be exempt.
But where's the line ?
Size ?
Its propensity for domestication,
its rank on an arbitrary scale ?
The perfumed beauty
of a single flower diverts
the senses and disconnects
attention to the suffering
of small things.
We are blissfully unaware.
Does anyone hear them,
does anyone care,
or does life's little screams
fall into an uncaring nothingness
and if so, then what of our own.
Copyright ©
Paul Willason
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