by Kevin Carey
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| Shutterstock A-I generated image |
A long, long time ago a very bad wolf,
probably the worst wolf ever,
did some very bad things to some lambs,
some of the worst things ever done to
lambs anywhere. As a matter of fact, this
very bad wolf had wanted to eliminate all the lambs.
The lambs who were saved from elimination
made a pact with some very big bears
(who helped save them from the wolf)
and together they decided to push
some rabbits from their nests so the lambs could have a land
to call their own. It’s worth noting that these rabbits
had nothing to do with the very bad deeds of the very bad wolf.
.
So the lambs took a mile,
but then they wanted two, then three and so on and so on.
The rabbits who were being pushed from their nests fought
back and were called very bad rabbits.
The lambs who wanted even more land
made even more big bear friends
and this gave them even more power,
which they used to keep pushing more rabbits from their nests.
The rabbits had no bear friends
so they fought back again,
and they were called very very bad rabbits.
And so the story goes. But this story
has no end. The lambs are still pushing the rabbits
from their nests and soon they will
have eliminated all the rabbits
and when that happens
the lambs will have done
what the very bad wolf had wanted to do to them.
The moral of the story: a rabbit with no big bear friends is easy to push from a nest.
Kevin Carey is Coordinator of Creative Writing at Salem State University. Books include: The Beach People, The One Fifteen to Penn Station, Jesus Was a Homeboy, Set in Stone, Murder in the Marsh, and a new novel Junior Miles and the Junkman (September 2023 from Regal House / Fitzroy Books) and a new co-written poetry collection Olympus Heights (October 2023 – Lily Poetry Review). He is the co-founder of Molecule: a tiny lit mag.