Oh, the sound of Your mercy
a calf’s skull cracking like wet fruit
between the lion’s blessed jaws.
Such elegance in hunger.
Such holy punctuation in the scream.
We praise Your benevolence
in the slow bleed of the gazelle,
its legs still dancing
long after the gut’s been opened.
A waltz of grace. A lesson in letting go.
Behold Your love, you the all loving,
as it comes ashore in Tsunamis,
dragging children from their beds
into the arms of the tide.
Baptism by bone and salt.
Oh Creator, architect of fang and flood,
Who crowned the strong and taught them to drink blood.
No wiser hand could craft such law divine
Where nature loves the slaughter, by design.
Your favor is a wildfire,
Your kiss, a plague.
Your will, a butcher’s hymn
we dare not question
lest You love us harder.
To you Lord,
forever we bow and say,
Amen.
This poem is a work of dark satire reflecting on the brutality embedded in the natural world. Its tone of reverent sarcasm is aimed at questioning the notion of a benevolent creator within a system governed by predation, suffering, and indifference.
