As the poor animal wanders aimlessly inside its small cage,
the harsh metal bars limit its experience as the broken creature
dreams of its lost freedom, bellowing out a desperate cry.
Intimate anguish.
Pointless existence.
Loss of joy.
Regret of its capture.
The sad mewling that issues forth is painful to hear.
The other animals nearby respond to the harsh cry with their own,
their hopelessness echoing within and without. The zoo-world
becomes noisy, as all creatures join in and sing their laments.
What sweet wretched songs are sung! What desperate thoughts
are generated in the minds of the keepers! Do they listen? Do they feel?
Do they suspect? Do they know the wrongs that have been done?
To cage an animal, to lock it away from its natural world, to enslave it,
to force it to be but a shadow of its former self— what glorious actions
humanity can commit! What beautiful constructions are the zoos-of-the-soul!
Man, animal, even a plant— all creatures large and small— each one
a portion that seeks its fulfillment through life and existence, each one
now punished and made to be something other than its true self.
To dream of flight, to run unbounded across the vast and glorious green fields,
to imagine yet still crave that lost freedom, to live carefree and with noble purpose,
as light as a breath of air— even the lowliest, barbaric portion of Life
deserves its time and space in which to learn and grow. To cut away, to limit,
to heave weight upon a creature that cannot bear it, to demand compliance
and whip the once-proud animal into hard obedience— such are the motions
of this world and this time. Such are our actions today. The zoo is all around us.
Far away from the shore, cut off from the lands of peace and joy,
the broken beast no longer looks up but instead stumbles forward
with head bent down, shamed into submission, spirit hampered and controlled,
beaten into a pattern that is not its rightful own. The recurring dream it once had,
the memory of its life before, becomes more distant day by day as it loses its mantle
of purpose. It becomes over a span of time something other than it once was,
something much less, terribly transformed by its suffering and pain—
a corruption of its former and true self.
The poor creature is nourished during its captivity, given sustenance enough
to survive rather than being able to hunt and take for itself, its natural animal-right
terribly distorted. It is cleaned by its keepers and handlers, gawked at by some
wide-eyed strangers passing by and ignored by others, all the while forced to fit
into the cruel man-made place assigned it: a trapped animal, the broken yet once
magnificent and noble fact-of-life reduced to a folly. A story for others to tell,
how they once saw a great beast behind bars and caged away from others,
and how they felt connected to it, how they marveled at it and played along
laughingly, never knowing that the animal was a fleeting memory of what it was
long ago: a glorious and wild portion of LIFE now a mere shadow, a mocking
museum-piece that does not reveal nor contain the whole, a trapped spirit
existing as a weak ghost during the time remaining to it.
Oh, sweet memory comes and goes while the future stays forever out of sight.
Some traces remain, some reminders of events that once transpired but are now gone.
The animal eventually succumbs and dies finally, yet the spirit within runs free once again,
released from the shell of its body, given ample time and space to find itself once more,
becoming what it remembered in its captivity and could only strive towards in its dreams:
a free-roaming creature, noble, natural, graceful, and true, returned once again
to its simple state of joy, life, and being.
The Simple Way 