Interdependence Day

O say, can you see the enemy sign, the enemy line?

Build the wall and another and another. Let the huddled masses go straight to the fire or into the pan.

Home of the free, the guns that won the West, minimum wage, maximum security, animal factories, Agent Orange.

No one alive will move without the say-so of the authorities, so help me God and the red white and blue.

No one alive will overcome our full-spectrum dominance. Don’t make me use this. Oh, make my day.

We, the heirs of the Enlightenment, could commit to aristocracies; and what else? What else transcends the flesh and blood?

Interdependence Day, our precious connections with the living, the evolving. The mourning doves’ soft, gentle cries, coo coo coo coo, baby doves who thrive on the milk made in the throats of their parents, their souls immortal.

Hunters plant wheat and poppies, millet and sunflowers. Let the doves eat sunflower seeds. Bang bang bang.

I heard fireworks last night. I heard the geese call out.

And what can you see by the dawn’s early light?

Lee Hall holds an LL.M. in environmental law with a focus on climate change, and has taught law as an adjunct at Rutgers–Newark and at Widener–Delaware Law. Lee is an author, public speaker, and creator of the Studio for the Art of Animal Liberation on Patreon.