Did the squirrels indeed fall off your vine

drunk as lords, into your loving arms?!

 

What anthropomorphic plot

got you to inveigle them there

with those tipsy invitations to party?

The menagerie you aspire to

 - that ache to re-create a luscious jungle

in your chilly suburban hemisphere,

to paint it like Gaugin, full of parrots

and wilde beasties at your back-door

abundantly, for crumbs and cakes.

Aha! they think: here is a nice food bank,

a kindly flamboyant dreamer.

Some compensating ideologue-ess

who remembers the Eden promised

the lamb with the lion,

 the starving babes in Yemen.

 

Purists might preach

- that grey thing is a tree rat, gal,

not a proper thing in its proper place!

But the worm and ant are beloveds too;

the mongrel, the monster, the alien

as much as the lovely and correct.

 

Others might say: feed the fifty thousand

regardless, on principle;

 - on Suliman's ancient prescription

of fair shares.

And, or firstly, the sickly and poor;

rescue and save not just damsels

and victims,

beached whales and charred forest,

but entire planets, even immortal souls.

Such is the heroism of folly,

the folly in grandiose hope.

 

Not to mention, generosity of spirit

and courage of conviction.

Every unit, sector, cell or microbe

yearning, longing for completion,

for going home

to the belongingness of unity.

Unity. All-in-One, sustaining.

What is you is me.

 In me. And visa versa.

When a butterfly flaps, a sparrow drops,

hurricanes swathe many dimensions,

when one child weeps alone

It shudders and shatters entire worlds.

 

So the tree rats get to feast

and for sure,

when they topple from your tree,

you will catch them safely,

and let them down like thistledown,

and know for sure, besides

that you catch not just your vasty self

but, for one second, all of creation too.

 

 

ADDENDA

Not quite, you responded,

bottomed on the sacred ground.

 

That romantic take,

needing hopeful conclusions, fixes

actually is not the reality

of little skulls split,

bellies spilling their fermenting contents

for scavenger crows

 - no  pretty finale.