Quandary Poem by Jan Sand

I walk the woods and death is in my stride.
Each branch and leaf I brush aside is bruised.
For smaller forms of life I’m genocide.
To move through life is other life abused.
The world has only so much room to give.
Each eye, each mind, each place in Time and Space
Is eager just to know, to see, to live;
Looks fearfully to not forfeit its trace.
But just to live, with or without its will,
It must, some other life consume.
I cannot live without the skill to kill.
So killing is inherent from the womb.
One cannot, this primal rule, defy.
It’s terrible to live, but worse to die.