The Lives of the Animals
A sharp breeze,
From the grey morning.
It curls the kitten tighter into its mother.
The wind swirling its fur back against its body.
The black swallows struggle,
Carving the air,
Flat as discs.
And the people suffer,
With ailments, and grief, and death,
A million curses and aches,
Bound up with strings of human life.
But the animals live on,
Our travails are not for them.
Their story is written in the streets,
And forests, and salt water, and sand,
In the empires of mud and cold.
I look down at my hand.
And the ants are climbing upon it again.
