Small and Great

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

A rat in Bracken Lane runs straight across

My path and all of living meaning fills

The world.  We do not need a plane to cross

The seas.  Safaris with their lions and kills

Are no more life and death than what this rat

Entails.  A London zoo with cats caged up

Is no more universal, come to that,

Than this one rodent.  Critters in that cup

Have no more life in them than this one beast.

This rat is life writ small and large.  The whale

You never see is larger but at least

The rat is mammal life on every scale.

  A shark won’t eat him.  Barracudas can’t.

   This rat is total living, vast and scant.