AN ALLEGORY

AN ALLEGORY
 
…We dangle/ thoughts above ourselves/ like fishing lures to draw out/ a response and end up/ feeding our feelings. We want/ to be helpless to their strength.---Hannah Stephenson, “Strong Feelings”, The Storialist, 04-02-12

 
 Even that nutty rodent stops short
 Of its kamikaze threat, twirls, jumps,
 Lands on the feline foe twice its size,
 Snarls for all its worth, but the fancied
 Bully glides gracefully away, wagging
 Its dismissive tail: she does not do nuts,
 Besides, pipe down Squire, your guess
 Will choke you yet. How much thought
 Is required to burn this side of the woods?

 It took a rock-hard crock of a lie to kill
 A 100K in the Iraq War, no weapons
 Of mass destruction could kill that many
 In a cranky year; it should not take this
 Buck-teeth nut its fear to lay its throat
 For early-spring rending. Yet, it is grand
 To flex muscle where there is none
 To feel towering, herculean strength
 Ooze through grass-like veins awhile
 And fade away into a quivering branch
 With its purloined bud of cherry…

 Mayhaps, guessing still how dread
 Becomes a dream, becomes a reason
 For quartering all those Taliban, Syrian,
 Maguindanao, Kampuchean children,
 Old and injured beyond their time
 When strife that maims and murders
 Are still a monopoly of learned men
 Who play and sleep with napalm bombs,
 And stridently yakking presidents
 Who ask not what your country can
 Do for you, but ask what you can do
 To vaporize old women, old men, children
 And their poultry, too, and hope mankind
 Can also make a playground of the moon.

 Ah, how we think we can make our hearts
 Love, and suffer the wounds and tears
 That come after. I think, therefore, I feel.
 I feel, therefore, I may be alive. Or happy.
 I think.

 The rodent on the twig stares at the cat
 waiting under the tree, and quakes. I think.

---Albert B. Casuga
 04-02-12