Nature Trail

a poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

A wild boar (it thought itself mild mannered)
Rubbed its firm behind up against a boulder,
Then fertilised a spot of soft ground, near an oak,
Where blue bells bloomed each spring. It, no, He
Then took a long bath in a clear mere.
He thought of his domestic cousins which languished in a pen
And had to crap where they slept and the humans
Who had the audacity to call them dirty pigs?
The very same animals they fatted up and ate.
Noisy humans who lived in polluted cities; one
Could smell them from miles away.
As the boar toweled himself on a turf of dry grass
He heard the distant roar of a four-wheel drive
And he knew what that meant. Foul smelling men
With guns would try to hunt him down, kill
And roast him over an open fire while bragging
About their hunting skills,
Leave his beautiful teeth to grin on top of a stone
And he would never live to see wild flowers bloom,
On the spot of ground, he had so tenderly fertilised.