The Animals Are Off The Grid

The animals are off the grid.  Think
about it: no jobs, so no need to keep time.
What’s the point to having a Monday
or even a Tuesday if you’re an animal?
Friday?  Pointless.  There are no weekends,
people, and no Sabbath!  It’s intolerable.

I propose that we give the animals jobs.
These will of course have to be tedious —
how else to depress a deer or make a clockwatcher
out of an owl?  Soon enough, they’ll develop
calendars and then start crossing off
the days to vacation.

Of course, we could just kill them.  Nothing
gives you a reason to put a structure on time
like your own death.  “It happened on a Tuesday.”
This assumes, of course, that there is an afterlife.
An aferlife for animals.  Will deer get their own, and owls
get another?  Will they be close to our own?

The new world is coming: forest cubicles.
Rows of antlers visible, bent to their tasks.
Owls calculating in the trees; now and then,
a shot will ring out and a corpse shall be dragged away.
This will show them what Humpday means!
No more slacking, no living in the now,
and of course, they’ll line up
to get a good pew on Sundays
from which to worship a benevolent God.