Unbearable Truth

A poem by Lorne Laliberte

Foreword:

This poem was inspired by a brief news item I saw on T.V. about a group of hunters who shot a black bear cub out of a tree. I was raised to respect living things and I don't really care for the idea of hunting when it isn't done for subsistence. I can understand the appeal of spending time outdoors, testing your shooting skills and pitting your tracking abilities against the keen senses of nature's other beasts -- but that's what target shooting and wildlife photography are for.

Why does man always resort
To killing animals by sport?

Why can't we more honestly say
"The animal was in the way?"

For by our actions, it would seem
We have no conscience to keep clean.

And worse than that, once it is dead
We wear its clothes on back and head.

So, why feel guilt when we can say
"We kill for sport, it is our way?"

This is why I was confused
When I by chance saw on the news:

Proud hunters, proudly hunting went
And shot a bear without lament.

But what their trophy could not say
Was that this black bear died that day

While it was trapped atop a tree -
The sport in that I cannot see.

Afterword:

The thing that really got me about the news item was the young age of the bear, its clumsy helplessness clutching to the top of the tree as the hunters below took aim, and the sickening expressions on the hunters' faces as they gloated over their easy kill.

A lot of my writing from '89 had a chip on its shoulder with regards to man's mistreatment of nature; it shows in this poem and in The Fox as well. When I got to university a year later I wasn't sure what career to aim for so I opted for the interdisciplinary study of Environmental Science. It turned out to be less oriented toward finding solutions than I liked. To this day I wish I'd taken Computer Science instead, but I already knew how to program computers. Ah, the arrogance of youth.

Last modified: November 15, 2003
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