The Process of Natural Affection

Can you be fond of the cat and the finch
And make no excuses for either, equally,
Cast a cold eye on life but warm to lives?

The cat with a finch caught in its teeth
Will growl at you and hiss if you try to release
The bird that sang and shat in your eaves.

The cat would continue to eat the bird, or
The bird, freed, would carry on singing,
If you collapsed and died alongside them.

It’s a cold-eyed planet invented these lives
And picked among our ancestral ways
To hungrily specialize. Spare it your sighs.

It’s the cat that can suffer and will die.
The bird can fall and will that could sing and fly.
It’s affection for them both can survive.