Meerkat Society by Mike Mesterton-Gibbons

Meerkat Society


Majestic eagles soaring in the sky
 
Eat lunch by swooping down to catch their prey,
 
Except if there's a meerkat standing by,
 
Resolved to warn all others: hide away!
 
Known far and wide for working as a team,
 
A meerkat gang takes turns at ev'ry chore.
 
Togetherness is how they stand supreme.
 
Supporting kith and kin's what they live for ...
 
Once also our own species, humankind,
 
Cooperated more along life's road.
 
I hope we can rebuild those ties that bind,
 
Embracing what defines the meerkat code:
 
That since divided you are bound to fall,
 
You live as all for one, and one for all!

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. He still works with colleagues on mathematical models of animal behavior. But time once devoted to teaching is now instead available for creative writing, especially acrostic sonnets, one of which placed first in the Adult Category of the Southern Shakespeare Company’s 2020 Sonnet Contest.
Other acrostic sonnets have appeared in Light Poems of the Week, Lighten Up Online, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily and The Satirist.  He also regularly writes limericks, several of which have appeared in Britain’s Daily Mail.