...Dead Reckoning... 

Here as I try to sleep, 

it occurs to me that 

small insignificant creatures 

are dying by the thousands 

out in my back yard. 

 

Of course, 

if I included bacterium 

this death toll would 

be in the trillions, 

but though such life 

falls under my dominion, 

I refuse to let 

such mass expiration 

hold sway over my 

personal mortal morality. 

 

Don’t know that I 

should be forced to care 

about a few million assorted amoeba 

or associated protozoan lifeforms either. 

Damn but I’ve got my 

empathic pathology bar set 

and there are levels beneath which 

I refuse to care, so 

if you’re just some lowly 

single celled organism… 

forget about it! 

 

As I try to sleep, 

small bugs devour 

even smaller worms, 

and these high protein/

low carb munchies 

are oblivious to ever larger 

predatory insects 

who are in turn 

about to be crushed 

between the slathered jaws 

of sophisticated yet 

still slithering invertebrates. 

 

As I try to sleep, 

there is absolute carnage 

transpiring in my back yard 

and I find it impossible to dose off 

out of a sense of stewardship to 

all those lesser entities 

there beneath me at 

sub-lawnmower level. 

And yet… 

 

And yet each creature consumed 

serves the purpose of another, and 

though it saddens me, 

I learn to cope, for 

there is a certain brutal logic to 

all this death. 

 

Yes, there beyond my window, 

as each consecutive 

tiny corpse decays 

and drops away into 

the ever waiting soil, 

I should be in the deep 

realm of slumber, but… 

yet another quandary 

has overcome me. 

 

What with all this death of 

lesser insignificant beings, 

just how does our President 

sleep at night?

                                   

Ó04 Jack David Hubbell

(for George W. Bush)