Wild Thing:  A Poem

The wild thing becomes a poem;
How it crawls on its white belly
To scrape the grass.
Its jaws are the insight,
Its paws the indifference,
Its nails the drudging instruments.
It knows it must struggle to live
In such ignorance as this wilderness.
How its death would be so
Forgotten so it must
Fight to stay remembered.
How it clambers up the slippery
Side of humanities cliff in storms
Of humility and mendacity.
How it shudders in a morning chill
Of those who would read it.
How it would fill them with this void;
This vacancy it begs to be
Understood yet it senses terminality
So it breathes so shallowly to not
Be given quite away it stays low.
It cravenly creeps to shelter
Even when there is none to be found.
It never gives up or surrenders
Even though in fact it is so surrendered
To life that it enjoys such calamity.
And such searching and trying to
Survive the destruction of its habitat,
Through bad weather and exposure.
In the absence of cover and protection
It dies to keep trying and gives up
Wondering or caring if it is hungered for,
Or wanted it just screams its only call
Like a screeching hawk or a screaming mouse.
It is not on either side and has no stand,
It cares not whether to live or not.
Frozen in the eyes of fate
It holds on to the ground like
A destiny.