A poem I wrote a while back, and just felt like sharing...."PRIMATES"...our ancestors....
PRIMATES
Our ancestors…
Did you know that in their natural habitat, primates travel in troops?
The Book of Knowledge, 1972 edition, has pages and pages
About these subhuman primate groups.
The Mountain Gorillas are calm and placid
And show minimal excitement and maximal group stability.
Can that be said of us humans, under pressure? I hardly think so.
In contrast, the Chimpanzees of Tanganyika
show great exuberance and joy, but very low stability.
They hoot and embrace warmly…
They are extreme extroverts…does that sound a little more familiar?
Then there are the Gibbon monkeys, who live in families
Where the males and females show equal dominance,
And very little friction…how cool is that!
And one group of gorillas might get along very well with another,
But both could become aggressive toward a third group.
On the other hand, Apes in one group
may encounter monkey groups without aggression.
They may even sleep in the same tree…who knew?
I went to the Los Angeles Zoo once, many years ago.
There was quite a crowd gathered around the Baboon compound,
And the Baboons were clustered together at the back of the fenced area,
Quietly studying the crowd of humans.
Suddenly they all dashed forward, hurling excrement across the fence
At the crowd watching them.
And the humans, who understood fairly quickly what was happening,
Screamed, and ran in retreat.
I laughed and laughed.
No one else thought it was very funny.
But I was out of range, purely an observer
as the other flustered humans tried to gather their composure.
We hurl excrement at each other all the time, you know.
We hurl political shit, and religious shit,
And “my stuff’s better than yours” shit,
And “my tribe’s better than yours” shit…
The primates were just taking another step closer,
Trying to catch up with us on the evolutionary path.
I can’t imagine why they’d want to do that…
It is my firm belief that very early on
they didn’t like where things were going
and they got off the bus.
No one who looks into their eyes
could doubt we are one.
There in their eyes is the haunting recollection of the ages.
There is wonder and confusion and resentment and anger,
And disappointment.
They are where we came from.
Uncomplicated by the avarice of mankind,
They embrace their young, they protect,
they contemplate, they love, just as we love.
Perhaps better.
The things we do to them in the name of advancing science,
In the name of healing ills and patenting drugs…
Surely God must have to look away.