IMAGE:   Some great white sharks swimming restlessly in a deep ocean.

SETTING: Four friends sit at a seaside cafe after a day of shallow diving.
         As the sun melts into warm orange hue they read some poems about the sea 
         while jabbering nonchalantly while sipping coffee, wine, and a bit of beer.

SHARKS: Thoughts on Apex Blindness

	Endless hunger
	Turbo-charged feeding machines
	Underworld lions
	Living solely to mate and feed.

	Sleek, grey-finned phantoms
	With a charnel house of crushing teeth,  
	Bloodhound noses scanning for iron scents, 
	They are endowed by pure, cold instinct.

	Primal embodiments of terror
	Insatiable hunger of the deep
	Woe to any creature they
	Meat.

	Superb at butchery
	There efficient surgeons of the sea
	Relying on a heightened, sixth sense
	To identify targets with surgical precision
	With sharp fleetness.

	Someday to other predators
	And marine scavengers will they
	Also taste sweet?


Philyra: (her voice distant, as if retrieving something half-forgotten from childhood) 
          Non-seeing—that's what the monks called it. Avidyā. The blindness that devours 
          without knowing what it destroys. (pause) Do you think we'll ever truly understand 
          the depth of suffering that kind of unseeing hunger creates? Not just in others, 
          but in ourselves?

Andrei:  (leaning back, eyebrow raised, unable to hide his condescension) Philyra, please. 
         Sharks don't see the way we do—they don't philosophize about their dinners. 
         They sense a perturbation in the water, a weakness, a wound leaking blood, 
         and then—(snapping his fingers)—zen chomp. No hesitation, no moral calculus. 
         Just execution. (slight smile) There's something almost... pure about that kind 
         of brutality. 

Jules:   (chewing on a tunafish sandwich, then pausing briefly as the irony dawns on him,
         then wiping his mouth as he sets the sandwich down) And yet, some human beings—
         the apex predators of the boardroom or the ballot box—are not so different. 
         They have a knack of sensing where the 'meat' is and quickly get to the bone of 
         any issue. (looking at Andrei meaningfully) Some even take pride in it.

Soo:     (shaking her head while swirling a cup of dark coffee in tight, while her other hand 
         scrolls absently across her iWatch) You've both got it half-right, which means 
         you're both half-wrong. (finally meeting their eyes) Yes, predators sense their 
         environments keenly—brilliantly, even.  But here's what you're missing: the smart ones? 
         The ones who survive over generations? They regulate. They know that if they consume 
         too much, too carelessly, too greedily, their erase your own futures. We must not 
         collapse the ecosystems that sustain us. (sets down her cup with finality) 
         Predators who lack foresight don't become apex anything. They become extinct.

Jules:   (with a tinge of sarcasm) Well, I guess humans are dumb predators . . .


=================================================================================
from _AmeriSong: Poetry, Art, & Dialogs about Amerika_ by T Newfields
SUMMARY:    Some thoughts about the instinctual efficiency sharks and the nature of human consumption and ambition.
KEYWORDS:   Shark Poem, Carcharodon carcharias, amniforme sharks, pelagic poetry, 
　　　　　　　non-seeing, Sharka, food chains, apex predators

Author: T Newfields [Nitta Hirou / Huáng Yuèwǔ] (b. 1955)
Begun: 1996 in Shizuoka, Japan / Finished: 2025 in Shizuoka, Japan
Creative Commons License: Attribution. {{CC-BY-4.0}} Granted

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