"There's Always Some Killing You Got To Do Around the Farm"

The evidence I've read suggests
Every great and trivial death
Brings to an end four billion years
Of continuous surviving

Unless that all-consuming torch
Has already been handed off
To some fucked or budded sucker
Now burning with eternal flame.

Sunday I crushed eight black widows,
Three females and five males who lived
Their well-adapted spider lives
In our convenient, shadowed shed.

I didn't spot their spiderlings,
If any, so it's possible
I did my part to bring an end
To lineages long as mine,

Long as boasted by blades of grass,
By each wriggling bacterium
Home in the corners of my eyes,
Thriving on my every eyelash,

Long as that longest tree-top twig
Tipping the highest canopy
The thickest rainforest can brag.
As you live, you can brag the same.

Every twig tip has the same trunk,
The same roots, in the deepest end,
Digging down through the same hard ground.
Choose your own implications, friends.