After Eden

It was not until our species, Sapiens
We pridefully declare it, came upon
The earth and started in to use its bigger,
Much more pleated brain, and its more complex
Technological contrivances,
And its more labyrinthian social ties,
That any creature lived who could contrive
To regularly control a growing number
Of the other elements and species
Of the world for its own use and pleasure.

And not until our species any creature
Could concoct a consciousness of being
Separate from nature—distant from it,
And even in so many ways opposed
To it—so it could seek to dominate
And use it as no other creature, not
Even earlier forms of hominids,
Justified in the name of pure survival.
And thus began the fatal flaw of hunting.

That revolution in the human story
Was no doubt in the tribal memory
Of ancient Hebrews when they copied down
Their narrative of how the world began.
They started it with Eden, where they were given
A garden “to dress it and to keep it,” where
They lived in harmony with “every creature
Of the field and every fowl of the air,”
And foraged from trees “pleasant to the sight
And good for food”—in other words, the earth
Before the advent of the hunt, when we
Survived in general harmony with nature.
But then came the transgressions and we were cast
From paradise and forced to wrest a living
From a cursed earth, where God decreed
That “every moving thing that liveth shall
Be meat for thee” and “the dread of thee shall be
Within every beast upon the earth.”
And thus a new and adversarial role
For humankind was set among the species
He had laid before them in the land.
And this led to the evolution of human
Domination of the Earth and finally
To our ability to end the lives
Of all the fowls of the air, the fishes
Of the sea, and all the species that
The lord has ever put on earth, including
Ours.

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