He had traveled to Africa to be more at one with nature, but now all he could was hide in the tall grass of the plains and watch helplessly, as the poachers ripped the tusks from the elephant still alive, only to raise for money to terrorize the Godfathers of terrorism. The real crime he knew though was not the heinous, horrors man visits upon fellow man, but the innocent lives they steal with impunity, without slightest show of respect or honor, as if life was created only for humankind’s demented perverse soulless indulgences of murder and destruction of the defenseless, whom it was to be their charge to serve and nurture.

He wondered tears streaming down his cheek feeling the elephants agony in his heart; how even he, a being greatest of faith in LOVE could turn a blind eye, a hardened heart, pretending that this was part of some perfect divine plan. No these were the actions of a race of beings who had so completely forgotten and lost harmony with their illusion, their experience, that their freewill had become, but a nightmarish weapon, a dreaming death threat, to all life that exists within.

How was it he thought; that mankind became infected with a plague of malicious intent to life, a disease of the mind and senses leaving them to feel that only human life was precious, thou that belief will ultimately wipe them from this experience of being.

He knew loving forethought was their only cure, the only grace that will save them, thou he was losing hope they could remember in time to embrace it.

Why had he chosen this experience, that seemed to him with awareness expanding without rhyme nor reason, but why did not now matter, as he vowed; never to make such an ill fated, tortuous choice again.

Some he pondered feel they were born in the wrong time, the wrong gender, but he felt he was born the wrong species and it wasn’t some grand animal like eagle or dolphin he felt more of a connection to. No even the existence of the lowly maggot made more sense to him, for at least the maggot played an essential role in life’s process.

Finally, the poachers were gone and he approached the maimed elephant taking its last gasps of this life and in its eyes, one word he heard silently uttered; why?

just LOVE…
Kip Baldwin
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“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” ~ Walt Whitman