Poems of compassion dedicated to the non-human animals who share this planet
with us and the people who fight for them.
If I could hand you freedom, love
suspending what there’s nothing more I can give
than your vision of cloud and sky unfurling
this moment in pieces that you fall with
first dangling free-board hull-side
lifting sicknesses, mechanical crane meeting,
your dragged by bound leg, letting go you are
infirm ripped from the downing of thousands
upon thousands, your kind, your creatureliness
in cargo ship of unfitness carrying destinations
terminal, to nothing to normal this back and forth
crowding to shortening
days to another storm rising, starving,
your thirst, disabusing not
of waters reflecting same comforts,
constant in their letting go, oceans’ washings,
no mercies
there, as if I could hold you
in the light of nothing holding on
in the light of nothing holding us together.
©Lynne Goldsmith, 2020
Image Wikimedia Commons
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