Save the Earwig!
We protest whilst demanding that all life,
all living creatures, have the right to live
but we humans in ways still primitive
readily cause so much life so much strife
until our misdeeds cut like a knife
our deserving conscience since we give
naught towards the creatures’ cause, dismissive
are we of our apathy so rife.
But the creatures about which we don’t preach,
the bugs that can’t bring us to them adore,
their ugliness our hearts they can’t reach,
their lives we don’t at all care to restore
—instead we stomp on them, their ‘rights’ we breach—
the creepy crawler life forms we’ll ignore.
Frank Sterle Jr