A New Reality
Remember our times under the aging apple, Pop,
When you were out cutting hay
And Ma would send me up with your lunch?
How all the cows would lie with us under that dying tree
Whose fewer leaves each year provided less and less shade
But all the comforts of familiarity?
I remember the year you decided that Strawberry
Wasn't earning her keep anymore;
How, when the truck came to take her,
You had to pry me from her neck,
How she called to us as they drove away.
You explained to me then about slaughterhouses and profits,
And how the fact that Strawberry had spent her whole life giving us all the milk she could
Had no bearing in the ledger book;
How slaughterhouses were never meant to be cruel
But only turned out that way
Because making a profit requires expediency.
You thought you had to be rock hard, Pop,
To help me face the world;
You made me stand like a man
And accept reality
I just didn't want it to be so violent;
If Strawberry had to die
I wanted her to lie down one day
Under the old apple,
To lay her head on the grass beside us
And not wake up.
But you told me to accept the world as it was.
A lot of years later
In a hospital after your heart attack,
Ma woke us all and we gathered around your bed.
If you had to die, Pop,
I didn't want it to be so violent
Or so soon.
You never got to meet my friend Angie
Or hear her ideas about veganism;
Would you have wanted to hear?
I stood like a man
When the undertaker came to take you,
And I accepted your reality.
But later Angie and I planted a young apple over your fresh grave,
And vowed that for the family we were planning,
We'd create a new reality.
Anonymous
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