And We The Creatures                           If You Love This Planet:
                                                                 A Plan to Heal the Earth

The Animals of America by Stephen Dunn

The animals have come down from the hills
and through the forests and across the prairies.
They are American animals, and carry with them
a history of their slaughter. There's not one
who doesn't sleep with an eye open.

Out of necessity the small have banded
with the large, the large with the large
of different species. When dark comes
they form an enormous circle.

It's all, after years of night-whispers
and long-range cries, coming together.

To make a new world the American animals
know there must be sacrifices. Every evening
a prayer is said for the spies who've volunteered
to be petted in the houses of the enemy.
"They are savages," one reported,
"let no one be fooled by their capacity for loving."

The Bear on Main Street by Dan Gerber

What made the man kill this bear?
His truck, across which the bear's body lies,
tells me it wasn't to feed his family
or because his children were cold.

The bear has beautiful black feet, delicate
almost, like the soles of patent leather slippers,
and the wind riffles the surface of its fur
with the sheen of water in the autumn sun.

The bear looks as if it might only be sleeping,
but its tongue lags from its mouth, and the man
has wrapped it with stout twine and bound it
to the bed of his truck
as if he were afraid it might speak.

Three teenage boys pull their pickup to the curb.
One of the boys guesses what the bear must weigh.
Another wants to know how many shots it took,
and the third boy climbs down. He strokes its nose and forehead.

He traces the bear's no longer living skull
with the living bones ofhis fingers
and wonders by what impossible road
he will come to his father's country.

I Used to See Her in the Field Beside My House by Ashley Capps

Perhaps it is the way your nipples,
long like fingers on an open hand,
beckon the tired, huddled, osteoporosis-fearing
masses to your swollen, steaming milk sack.

The skin of your huge behind ripples
where giant horseflies understand
only that you taste good, not that they hurt you while you're looking
at the vast and swirling pasture through a crack

in your stall. Cow, listen—forget the deep pools
of rain that pock the lit, green land-
scape of your youth. Forget the singing
man who rubbed your head. He's readying the rape rack.

In the end, you're skinned and processed. A hip pulls
loose, shoulders dismantle in the hands
of some masked worker. Old girl, there is nothing
in this world that loves you back.

"Cows on modern dairy farms are repeatedly artificially inseminated on what
farmers call "the rape rack.. " The milk they produce to feed their young is
taken several times each day by machines that irritate their sensitive udders,
leading to mastitis and infection. Their male calves are taken from them and
chained in tiny veal crates, where they spend 16 weeks barely able to move,
before being slaughtered."
                                         —Animal Times Magazine, PETA

No One Talks About This by Carl Rakosi

They go in different ways.
One hog is stationed at the far end
of the pen to decoy the others,
the hammer knocks the cow
                                        to his knees,
the sheep goes gentle
                      and unsuspecting.
Then the chain is locked
around the hind leg
and the floor descends
                                from under them.
Head down they hang.
The great drum turns
the helpless objects
and conveys them slowly
to the butcher waiting
at his station.
The sheep is stabbed
behind the ear.

Gentle sheep, I am powerless
to mitigate your sorrow.
Men no longer weep
                                 by the rivers of Babylon
but I will speak for you.
If I forget you, may my eyes
lose their Jerusalem.

The Horse's Life by J.P. Dancing Bear

The cowboy-poet has written many lines
           praising the virtues of his horse.

He believes his animal has a loyal heart
           and a soul—that one day it will rise

from tired flesh to a heaven of high grass
           and wait for him, saddled, ready to serve.

Bears In China by Ellen Bass

More than 7000 bears are currently imprisonedfor their bile
which is used to produce shampoos, aphrodisiacs and "miracle" remedies.

Anyone can find it on the internet—the bear
crushed into the wooden cage, flattened
like a rug, folded and packed for transport.
The eyes, staring out the small openings, are alive,
are suffering. And the snout pushes out
through one lashed comer. If it weren't
a real bear, if it weren't pinned flat,
the crate so tight it cannot scratch,
twenty years lying in its urine and feces,
if it didn't have a small hole pierced
in its belly, with the dark hair shaved
so it looks like a pale iris,
like a terrified eye, the pupil
shrunk almost to nothing, if a tube
were not stuck through that cut
and if bile were not sucked out
like the insides of an egg, and if
the bear did not roar, not even
in the beginning, and did not bite
himself, and did not eat the food
by his five-toed paw or stretch his tongue
to the drops of water on the bar,
and if the massive body had not turned
a deaf ear on the longing of the soul
to die, if what was in that box
was only the fur of a bear, scraped
of its fat, its flesh hot stew
in the stomachs of children, the hide
worked supple, the heavy claws intact,
then could we climb into that skin
and become the bear? Could we know
what it knows? If we walked
through our lives, draped
in the tremendous coat of the bear, all
our actions would carry its sorrow.

Narcosis Song by C.J. Sage

There was another sea, outside,
wrapped around me;

savage waves and old kelp
were rocking arms.

Hunger and fear were fibers
of its endless soft net—

captured by the hands
of a stranger who pierced it,

I swallowed a piece
as a last sweet secret.

At night I sigh
that stolen mesh unfurled

to cloak me in my dreams,
and each morning when I wake

within the sudden dawns of glass,
I swallow again.

I have fallen through a hole
in an old weave, to the surface

of a small, thirsty earth—
into a nightmare, or unfinished hunt.

Most ornamental saltwater fish are taken from the wild, often from
depths requiring that a needle be inserted into their bladders to
release the gas caused by being brought to the surface. 'Needled'
or not, most do not survive even their shipment to wholesalers or
pet stores. Those who do survive the trip usually suffer captivity-
related illnesses followed by slow death in borne or office aquari-
ums.

Panda Passing by Kenneth Pobo

She's going, her panda
spirit finalIy returning
to China. No trap
of laws can hold her—

the body is what she
leaps out of. The zoo
looks strange. Now
she can roam where
her ancestors roamed
before missionaries
and guns came. People

cry over empty spaces
where cameras have
nothing to aim for. She
can't hear them.

A river swings
into view. Grass. Small
indigo flowers around
her paws. As wind
meets her fur, she
climbs a rusty hill

where the sun is gold
straw in an owl's nest.

Zoo Vigil by Hannah Stein

We dream juugle, we dream veld. Where
elephants now go to die: bare ground
fenced between calligraphied giraffes
and the tender-eyed okapi. An elephant

lies in state: a kind of earthen wake for
the living, who lumber in needful ritual,
knowledge in their silent feet,
their arcane, undomesticated bones.
They grieve in a dusty oval,
touch their comrade again and again

to make sure that he is dead, to lay
their peace upon him, gather his peace
unto themselves. Hour upon hour
they circle him and touch him,
the friable ground wreathing up

all that can shade eternity back to them,
whatever more than dust
may spread safekeeping.

And We The Creatures edited by C.J. Sage.  

This collection is unlike anything that has ever before been published.  A body of excellent poems by renowned and emerging American authors for animal rights and appreciation, it is not only the first of its kind but comprises the very best poetry on the topic.  Beginning with Pulitzer Prize winner Stephen Dunn's "The Animals of America," which imagines how animals view their human relations, and ending with the editor's dedication poem "For the Animal Rights Activists," the anthology moves gently from a concern for the welfare of traditional family pets—something to which most everyone can assent—through the situations of animals for food, clothing, hobby, beauty, science, and the myriad industries of human profit—aspects of the topic which many of us might never have seriously considered—and finally to the celebration of non-human animals and the human animals who work for their safety and kind treatment.  And We The Creatures is a book that everyone should read.

"It is rare to find a collection of poems devoted to animals, so it gives me pleasure to be able to recommend this anthology featuring the work of well-known contemporary poets.  It is a delight." —Sir Paul McCartney

It was very difficult to select a limited number of poems from And We The Creatures when each and every poem is worth featuring in this book.  Many poems in this collection are heartbreaking and deeply troubling to anyone with a sympathetic heart.   It's bewildering or ironic, for instance, that teddy bears are one of the most beloved gifts on the market, because bears are so adorable, and yet real bears have been hunted, slaughtered, imprisoned and tortured throughout the centuries.  When making the case for a vegetarian diet, I often ask animal-eaters if they have pets, and if they love them, then why can't they extend the same love that they hold for their pets to animals in the wild as well?  I refuse to eat cows, pigs, sheep, fish, chickens or animals and birds of any kind; I've been a vegetarian for over twenty years.  I attribute my good health of mind, body and soul to living a life without eating my animal friends.   It's no coincidence that those who are vegetarians also care about protecting our national forests, wildlife refuges, seas and rivers, and our convictions extend to pro-peace demonstrations as well.  The poems in this anthology reflect genuine compassion for animals. They speak for the voiceless ones in a language that is moving, passionate and profoundly elegant. 

—Jacqueline Marcus, Editor of ForPoetry.com 

Please click here for contributors' notes.

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