Poems by Alessandra Foster
“H Is For Horrified”
By Alessandra Foster
“Everything about the hawk is tuned and turned to hunt and kill.”
Helen MacDonald, H Is For Hawk
Eating my peace-filled vegan meal,
I saw from the window a large bird
violently tearing pieces of flesh
from another creature
beneath her feet.
Head down to tear,
head up to chew and toss;
look left, look right
predator acting like prey.
When she pulled up on an entire
bony structure of tail feathers,
I knew she was eating another bird,
the discarded feathers mostly white.
A dove or gull?
It was almost her size.
How fast, how furiously, she ate,
standing on her prey
for at least an hour,
then suddenly hopped
to a shady wooded area,
the remains of her meal
still gripped by her talons.
Tossing feathers from the woods,
she increased the pile
she’d left behind.
Minutes later, condo workmen
with motorized lawnmower
sent feathers flying once again,
no trace to show
one bird died
one survived.
Witnessing
this death, this life,
how grateful I am
never to have to kill or eat
a fellow creature for my food,
nor fear to lose it
or be killed;
how grateful to be able
to pretend to be outside the plan.
“Wasted”
By Alessandra Foster
We were doing what we do
grazing chewing resting.
Our vision is not sharp
but sharply we knew.
Wolves. Behind us.
To the sides of us.
We huddled together.
We heard a cry,
one of our little ones
somewhere ahead of us
crying crying.
We moved forward
to find this calf
before the wolves.
Strange the wolves stayed
at our back and flanks.
Charging. Always charging.
Someone panicked.
We started to run.
We ran frantically forward
running running
all in the same direction
faster faster
the wolves charging, herding us
toward a path.
Hundreds of us, each beast
one to two thousand pounds
running steaming bellowing
forty miles an hour
thundering thundering
the calf forgotten in our fear.
Too late the steep cliff
no stopping
no turning back
hundreds of heavy bodies
piling into each other
plunging over the cliff
bellowing crashing
broken necks, backs, legs, horns
unbearable pain
blinding terror.
The hunters
waiting below
killing any of us still breathing
lest one of us survive
to tell our story;
to warn of wolves
who are hunters in disguise,
the crying calf a hunter in disguise;
to warn of a brilliant
efficient streamlined slaughter
of us whose every inch they needed
for survival: our skin, our fur,
our flesh, bones, sinews, milk.
Our lives for theirs
and nothing wasted.
“Trophy”
By Alessandra Foster
When the head is mounted,
will the driver boast about
the six-point buck he bagged?
Or will he sell the severed head
to someone else
to boast about?
I’d bet that head he’ll never say
“I hit this deer past midnight
on a twenty-mile-an-hour road
because I was tired, or drunk,
or going too fast
for the dangerous curve.”
Only witnessing does
watching from the woods
knew the buck alive,
knew how he suffered
until cops arrived to shoot him
and he died.
Now harsh winds warn:
never go beyond these trees
never walk across this grass
never step onto that road.
But the does are not listening.
They’ve all disappeared.
- Alessandra Foster is a lifelong and long-lived reader and writer of poems. She
became a vegan forty-three years ago after reading Peter Singer’s original Animal
Liberation while volunteering at a humane society animal shelter. She couldn’t stop the euthanasia of healthy
dogs and cats to make room for others, but she could stop supporting the
extreme cruelty to factory-farmed animals. And the terrible conditions for
human employees. Dog and cat sheltering has come a long way toward a “no kill”
commitment, and “plant-based” is everywhere, so one can hope…