That’s Why
So that’s why fizzy drinks hiss
as the foam peaks.
So that’s why a boy’s heart grows
twice its size in puberty.
So that’s why the birch gives off
through its 200,000 leaves
900 gallons of water a day.
So that’s why one paramecium in a drop
committed suicide because
it wasn’t recognized as great
by other paramecia in the drop.
That’s why 100 railroad cars
of shorn girls’ and women’s hair
from concentration camps
headed to doll factories.
That’s why ½ of factoryworkers worldwide
are younger than 12.
That’s why cutbacks in the warhead industry
looming on the horizon
are unrealistic.
That’s why vultures eat the eyes first.
That’s why cougars eat the heart and liver first.
That’s why the grizzlies eat the brains first.
That’s why soldiers cut off the ears of dead enemies
as souvenirs to show their girlfriends back home.
So that’s why 99% of all babies’ first words are—“Mother.”
So that’s why a Blue Whale has more cells in its body
than all the people who ever lived.
So that’s why Death sends no one’s corpse back
as unpublishable.
That’s why in the countdown to millennia
it's good to remember
from the Moon the Earth looks so small
astronauts discovered
they could blot it out
by holding up
their thumb.
—Antler, Milwaukee, WI
