Scats

By Keith Allen Daniels

If Earth is just a coprolite,
a tumbling sphere of dung
that keeps on rolling through the night,
by giant scarabs flung,

then whither do they roll this ball,
this teeming ball of crud?
Are you and you and I and all
just fodder for a grub?

And if the world is excrement,
whose droppings formed the nest?
Is something in the firmament
a scatologic pest?

I'd like to think we're more than that,
that Earth is not a spoor,
that somewhere back on Ararat,
in Babylon or Ur,

no chitinous contingent stormed
the fanes of humankind,
or, crushing our resistance, formed
a Babel for the blind.

I take my courage from the cat
who sees but doesn't flee
from things that we would tremble at,
if only we could see.