Husband Well

a poem by William P. Meyers

"I'll husband them so well
They shall go far with little."*
They must go far:
The skin of the beast is like
A great chain of mountains.
His brain is four cities of men:
A city of barking men
A city of banking men
A city of slaughterhouse men
And a city of circus men.
He wears a white pentagon jewel
Has a billion eyes
And spits venom from the sky.

Our resources are scant.
We were designed that way.
What we produce is harvested
We give our pollen freely to his busy bees
We slave in the rows of
His amber waves of grain.
We yield up to his machines
For a song and a dance.

But some of us are different.
We are his weeds
We hide among his groveling grain
We husband to our own purposes
We build upon ourselves
We uproot ourselves
And plan to depart the Beast's acres.

We know the history:
The Beast was spawned by prior beasts
The Beast is choked with parasites
The Beast is mortal.

So we will go far with little.

*Hamlet Act IV, Scene V Lines 137-138

Copyright 2015 by William P. Meyers, all rights reserved