Respect for All Living Things
Author: Bill Roberts
– from an Arapaho Indian proverb
Most men and women have it, live it -
respect for all living things.
Some of course don’t, which reveals itself
in wanton killings of people,
innocent animals, plants, the environment.
The American Indian in general believed
in respect for all living things – the belief
nurtured him – until the white man
appeared and practiced his
destructive, menacing, killing ways.
The Indian, try as he might, lost respect
for the living, at least the living,
breathing, thieving, conniving and
murderously unscrupulous white man.
But we see who won that contest
of wills, the Indian now consigned
to tiny parcels of property fit only for
the proliferation of mind-numbing casinos.
Still he dies by age forty-nine, on average,
eased into a final stupor by white man’s
sneaky-pete fire water – straight, uncut joy.
There is much to be learned from the Indian.
Simple study of who he was, who he has
become, where he’ll be in the future
could reveal a lot about mankind’s survival.
(Published online in the 1/17/10 issue of The Saturday Diner)
Note: Does this poem result from the drops of Indian (Cherokee) blood that courses my veins? Perhaps, but after so many years of watching the denigration of the former owners of the land we now inhabit – oh, those awful/wonderful cowboy and Indian movies of youth! – one does tire of the excrement from the bull. We watch as the American Indian fades slowly away, someday extinct so those once mighty tribes can be spoken of as myths and white man’s actions as unparalleled acts of kindness. Excuse me while I retch.
