From the antipodes of light
The grunting creatures in the Pleistocene snow and mud
Comes the inheritance of all people
Who must carry it around with them forever.
It must be in our DNA.
"Insects of an hour that hourly work their brother insect wrong."
Sometimes it must spill over; the pain gets too great.
Have we always aspired to the light, even as microbes?
Do animals go to their own afterlife?
Did Harvey the mistreated,
vicious rabbit unite with a leporid Satan?
Can we really help our evil?
At an age when we could not help it, have we taken wrong turns...
All of us?
It takes effort, in many cases, to be as good as possible.
Some do not even try.
(©1998 Mark Andrew Holmes.)
(Author's Note : The word "leporid" was misprinted as "leopard" in the publication,a typo occurring somewhere between the galley and final printing. "Leporid" [pronounced LEP-or-id]: having to do with rabbits or hares, from the Latin lepus,hare.--M.A.H.,2/20/98.)