Compassion Beyond the Page

You once had compassion

You once used to care

You didn’t turn the pages

hoping Wilbur,

despite Charlotte’s best intentions,

would still lie sliced

upon Zuckerman’s plate

You weren’t rooting

for Nemo to stay trapped

forever in the dentist’s tank,

to never again know the ocean

or see his father

You didn't cheer when a bullet

took the life of Bambi’s mother,

leaving a scared, confused orphan

to wander the forest alone

Man, as the looming harbinger of death,

did not qualify as the good guy

to your seven-year-old heart

It is just fiction, you say

But it isn’t

You didn’t just care

because they spoke English

You cared because they felt,

they lived, they loved,

and they still do

Not just the ones on the page,

but the ones on your plate

Their pain, their life, their death

isn’t fictional

It is a brutal reality

that would have horrified 

our seven-year-old eyes

If life were a movie

from the animals’ perspective,

humans would be

among the worst villains

the screen has ever known

But we don’t have to be typecast

In real life, we get to choose 

our own role

Written December 4, 2018