Cages Without 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 barless cages 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
while Time alone
makes ready the next 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 create
cages without bars?