Dear Mister Twain

Your words erupted
with contempt for them
they never bathed
and ate ant larvae for breakfast

Yet they had survived
for unknown millennia
where you wouldn’t have lasted
from noon to sundown

They knew how to find
water and food and shelter
when you would have been helpless
as a day old baby

You couldn’t have lived
in their desert anymore
than they could have lived in yours
and that’s the humor of it.

Jon Taylor lives in Nashville, TN. He can be reached at taylor.jon440@gmail.com. Read other articles by Jon.