There are, it is said, canine virtues:
loyalty, territoriality, obedience,
which even if actually vices
are still admirable in their doggedness.

In contrast, the feline virtues are independence
and furry sensuality asleep in the warmest spot,
while mice have a murine resourcefulness
that turns smallness into a subtle power.

Foxes have a vulpine cunning, hens a flustered
gallinity and owls a strigine pomposity.
Stags are noble, turkeys are gullible
and the big bad wolf is always ferocious.

Ground sloths and moas, if they still lived,
would mean something, that’s why
we painted woolly rhinoceroses
on the cave walls but now

we’ve factory farmed nobility,
performed toxicology tests on loyalty,
and in dark sheds of feathery panic
we’ve incubated a whole new creature.

We’ve performed a terrifying cave magic,
by imprisoning so many parts of ourselves,
the parts that want to bark at all strangers
or ruminate or snuffle, and we’ve liberated the one virtue

of the virus: blind ravenous virulence.

© Will Holloway 2009

See also:

Swine flu