No Hurry, Darwin

 

 

In putting down the bowl I thought that I was feeding cat,

But an interval of time showed me I wasn’t doing just that:

 

A furtive glance, in passing by, down at the catless bowl,

Revealed the truth: a colony of ants had full control:

 

A two-way stream of ant corsairs, in swarming over the lip,

With anticipating feelers drawn had siezed the kibbled ship.

 

Down and down and down they plunged into the stainless hold,

Then up, up, up with mandibles all full of kitty gold.

 

I thought to hoist the ship above the endless micro-waves

(They’ll swarm on me!) new thought: Consign them to their watery graves

 

—Drown! I filled the good ship Catbowl’s hold (such was my vengeful notion)

With waves of antic, frantic fear to form the Catbowl Ocean.

 

(I should have thought, for all their eons spent on effluents,

That evolution might have fashioned for them some defence

 

Against just such a Catbowl deluge swirling shy the brim

Each helpless ant that evolution hadn’t taught to swim.)

 

I left the good ship Catbowl foundered (I had no emotion

For the bloated drowned herd floating face down on the Catbowl Ocean).ä

 

 

Returning from my voyage upon the rank Digestive Sea,

Bloated (what I toted!), and now rose the surging Dyspepsi—

 

Ah! what then upon the Catbowl Ocean (gruesome!) met my eyes:

A marauding pack of yellow jackets too’d met their demise.

 

(I should have thought that adaptation, natural selection,

Would have wrought them zillion-generational watery protection

 

Against just such a placid, lurking Catbowl inundation,

And so avoid such ignominious annihilation.)

 

I briefly pondered how the lower creatures never learn,

And resolved to ruminate some more on this on my return,

 

For although the Sea of Dyspepsia was still in rank upheaval,

Compelled was I to satisfy  (just one more!) urge primeval.ä

 

 

As purposed, I returned to dwell, in gluttony’s aftermath,

How the lower creatures ever dwell on the unlearning path.

 

I chew on this, too, as I blithely drain the Catbowl Ocean:

How we’re quick to kill the things thereon that make a rippled motion

 

In our lives—and justified too, after all, it’s up to time

To make us tolerant, if not, it’s evolution’s crime.