Urgency’s Tyranny
by Odin Roark

Gotta go.

Gotta move.

Gotta get there first.

Human folly
fast at work.

While…

Lesser creatures
technologically untainted.
go about living,
unaware of this inordinate competition
of narcissistic compulsion.

Even as…

History knows how relaxed the spider waits.

How soundlessly steadfast the ant’s excursion.

How undeterred the tenacious cockroach.

And…

Unlike the butterfly,
or the first flowering plants,
man knows well how to take without giving,
incorporate running as stratagem,
roll with domesticated roulette,
and ego-procreation unabated.

We deliriously continue…

This human travesty of reckless behavior,
this sidestepping of the obvious,
where oxygenated patches of ancestral endurance,
Central Park oases,
withering Amazon jungles,
melting icecaps,
ocean’s Dead Zones,
drift neglected through our conscience.

Such is urgency’s tyranny,
the blinding brass ring quest,
that obviates the responsibility
of who and what we are.

So knows the smallest survivors of life,
inscribed in cave-wall history,
occasionally moving in and out of
our carefree existence.

All the while…

Nature’s wiser permanence that has learned well,
and will always continue to hone survivor skills,
continues to outlive our species.