Lynne GoldsmithPangolin Endangerment
Animal Rights Poetry By Lynne Goldsmith From All-Creatures.org

Poems of compassion dedicated to the non-human animals who share this planet with us and the people who fight for them.

Pangolin Endangerment By Lynne Goldsmith

Most widely trafficked mammal
yet seemingly unknown, you, pangolin,
creature of solitariness in your habitat
of erasures toward ecological disaster

of human creation that kills for paste
kills for powders of your scales
(keratin made, like in human nails
of nothing more than protein

that helps form cells) and yet
scales are stolen for cures,
fetuses for soup, humans
consuming sufferings:

their own wounds,
words, epilepsy, poison,
pains, witchery, attacks
in need of protections,
rituals, lactation, fertility,
and on this list goes

to how you are a delicacy
proving people false richness
in your non-existent luxury
of their invoking your magic
from your other world, yours—

the trees, the burrows,
your roundness forming
to closing out hostile forces
you could roll from edges
holding the earth as you go.

©Lynne Goldsmith, 2020

Pangolin
Image from Commons.wikimedia.org

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