The birds and beasts of cigarette cards are from Eden

The birds and beasts of cigarette cards are from Eden
now inhabitants of the suburban back garden
Where in the midst of foreign plants and flowers
they make their home, their they past their hours

Domesticated by bulldozers and the pollution
Feeling safe and secure, the fox, badger and hedgehog
As the really wild growl and rage in presentation
Entrained like vine to demonstrate the Nature

Of man's good husbandry, the absent fathers
Leave tiny chicks and ducklings to the maw
of machinery, crushing the living daylights
As the early thaw of the wild, bleeds into captivity

The footfall of freedom only for the baby-headed
Some try to climb the ladder through appetites
changing, as fatty life, like porkers, decline
But then Africa and Russia leads the proclivity

For hunting and killing, wildebeest and zebras
Big game for big boys with small shoe size
On the sly, like collateral dolplins, the leopard
and big cats, for a few thousand, are extras.