Survival isn’t Pretty

H. Bradford

08/06/21

Survival isn’t pretty.

There have been dark days before.

Global fires, sunless days, and acid rain.

Those times aren’t for the large, proud, upright creatures.

If you have feathers, fly away.

Hide under that hard, terrapin shell.

Slip into the mud or sea.

Enter a long, slow sleep.

Learn to eat carrion.

Take life from death.

If you have big teeth, now is the time to use them.

If you don’t, grow small, and slip into the shadowy crevices.

Parasites and scavengers have a chance,

But not plants with hungry leaves

and flowers with special needs.

Everything maladaptive is adapted to a time and place.

Time is kinder to snails, sharks, and tardigrades

Than it is to smart, sad monkeys.

Cataclysm settles the score,

A sudden change subtracts what is too precious for the world.

Too precarious in chain of being.

Survival isn’t pretty.

Pretty isn’t made to survive.

When Inessa Armand Died

When Inessa Armand Died

H. Bradford

09/19/20

Everyone cried

When Inessa Armand died.

Robert Service said 

She kept her figure into her forties.

A woman must be notable in these ways.

A carriage carried her casket 

to Red Square.

And she was interred there,

behind red bricks.

How could Lenin know the Caucasus had not been tamed

when she was sent away for healing waters and clean air?

Who thought of cholera and conflict?

So, everyone cried when Inessa Armand died-

Still young, and pretty, and beloved,

in a world that was still revolutionary

and alive with possibility.

Untouched by purges, reaction, and Georgian diseases.

Only Cholera,

which knows no party line.