Promise to Honor All Life

If I circle around you, having become this lifetime

A cat, would you recognize my Heart?

Yes, you would love me.

“I’m sorry you’re hungry,” he says to me, proclaiming his love to me in my human body.

And now I know to never ignore an animal.

If you walk by me when I am a cat

And I don’t see you in your truth

honoring all life,

I would be killed.

If you pretend not to know me,

and my heart goes out to you

and you don’t hear. Or you do but don’t care—

Oh, let me not worry like that.

Just promise me

That you will honor all life.

If I am one of those mangled cats in the alleys in Israel,

even if you remark with joy in your heart about how

much I bother you. Just do it with joy in your heart.