In a comment to the previous post, Chris Robinson makes reference to a poem from my book Magical Thinking. We bear a special responsibility, greater perhaps than the responsibility we bear toward each other, to care for animals. Whichever philosopher said that we reveal our character through our treatment of those weaker than ourselves was right, I think. Here is the poem.
Abandoned Bluetick Bitch
Numbed with self-loathing,
we abandon the emissaries
of grace. Chained to a tree
beside the empty rental
she hollowed out a den
for herself & her young.
By the time we found her
the water they’d left her
was a couple of days gone.
When the water was gone
she would have slept, not dreaming,
letting the pups nurse
her sparse milk & when
the smallest died she ate it to keep
her strength & cleanse the den,
depriving coy dogs & foxes
an expedient scent.
It’s likely there were two more
before we found her.
Ribs covered by a tissue of dry skin,
she was nothing-a shadow
on the dirt & was just able
to raise her head & take
a little water from my hand
before turning to nose
her three live pups awake.
Reader, it is true, there is
horror everywhere worse
than this & cruelty that beggars
imagination, but this
is local & particular; these were
my neighbors did this,
who, without even the excuse
of psychosis, committed this wrong.
Who live in this same light
& shadow I live in.
Let us kill one another
with heedless abandon-we deserve it-
but not these poor relations
whose lives are without malice
& whose motives are transparent.
Let us kill one another.