Bars

A child's laughter,
a parent's scorn,
an orangutan's puzzled gaze
at society ruling engagement.

Cotton candy's spin of pleasure,
stringed balloons freely bobbing above clutched fingers,
excited hands pitching desired morsels across the moat,
beings of a different kind scurrying to nourish the game.

Far below among the park grasses,
an ant pauses with heavy laden load,
a nod to the left,
noisy people,
a nod to the right,
quiet Borneo observers.

Maybe…

Ether's small colonists
perplexed at the giant's overwhelming conundrum,
easily accepts freedom
as but an evolutionary digit,
mixed in a universal formula,
seeing all existence as just...existence.

And perhaps…

Such miniscule reality instinctually understands
Man's fickleness abounding,
his pointing restless fingers but capricious appetite

for superiority never satiated.

Where comes such blinding hubris
making our bar obsessions so ubiquitous?

Shrugging…

The ant continues to carry
crumbs as daily sustenance,
collective acceptance as perpetual testament,
accepting so simply Time's
moment by moment eternity.

Still there's insistence
on territorial imperative,
Man's defensive lines created for
insect, fish, foul, animal and ourselves.

Demanding there be distinction
of land,
of mind,
of spirit.

But lest we forget…

Just as sands drift
from mountains once proud,
so too evolution
controls all changes.

Beginning malleable,
then edificial,
then erosional,
until eventually non-existent,
occasioning new genesis.

For we…

Powerless to determine the course of cosmic movement,
like mercury in free-fall,
can but dream wraithlike-consumption,
while Time alone
makes ready the next want/need struggle to survive.

Fearful we wait…

Even as our simple ancestral lineage,
the rat,
cockroach,
and ant,
peer out from the miniature cave openings of yesterday
and ponder the question for today's iteration of goliaths:

“Will they too someday create
omnipresent existence without bars?”