How Do We Know?

How do we know that the human mind

communicates in a manner more refined

or reasons better than any other living kind?

How do we know that fauna or flora

don’t have a more complex means or a

wordless method that far surpasses

the inconsistent hums, hisses, grunts, and gasses

that we, the people, use to justify violence

when we misunderstand each other’s intents?

Why do we choose to call them beasts

when we, too, attack, and kill, and eat

with no regard for consequence,

or how we affect anyone else,

while knowing they only kill to survive,

rather than a perverse sense of being entitled?

Why is our word not speaking “dumb” —

a synonym for senseless —

when we congratulate ourselves numb

on conquering the defenseless;

heralding a cacophony both ugly and boring,

as heaven and nature sing a wordless dirge of warning?

Why do we see other lives as less

when we’ve never seen how their lives progress?

For those who have, such as Goodall and Fosse,

who dared to observe and listen softly

and take in the ways of creatures unlike us,

were awed by their innate wisdom and wild elegance.

Why do we assume we have the right

to subjugate, to manipulate,

to regulate, to dominate,

and populate, and populate, and populate,

on a planet we did not create?

How do we know who are the beasts of this world

when the rest of the earth seems to thrive

when freed from the hubris of human pride?

And what could we together do

if we’d admit we never really knew;

if we considered maybe we were wrong;

that we’ve been making it up all along?

Communicating Authentically