Service takes many forms. TS and TOS member Alan Harris, of Tucson, Arizona in the USA, might be said to serve through his poetry.  One of the societal evils he helps combat is cruelty toward animals.
 

Alan was raised in a farming environment near Earlville, Illinois, USA, in which grain crops were grown and cattle, pigs and sheep were raised until they were ‘sold.’  As a boy he raised ducks, geese, and chickens in the back yard.  He didn’t think much then about what happened to animals after they were trucked away from the farm.  In his early adulthood, he even took a job at a turkey farm. 

“At the farm my assignment was to cut off the turkeys' heads with an air-assisted pair of shears,” he writes. “I didn't actually kill the turkeys, since they were already dead and gutted by the time they reached me, hanging upside down by their feet on conveyor hooks. I stood beside a big barrel and tossed the severed heads into it. When the barrel became filled with turkey heads, another worker would take it away and set up an empty barrel, and the decapitations would continue all day.

The setup there was like an assembly line (or rather a turkey disassembly line) as the person at each station did the same thing to each turkey carcass that came along. The turkeys were sold ‘fresh’ in boxes, ready for freezing or cooking.

I worked there only during the pre-Thanksgiving and pre-Christmas seasons that year, when demand for turkey dinners was high. At that time I was desperate for a job, so I set aside any concern about the lives of the turkeys. The pay was humble, as was the job. I imagine my karma for that year was decidedly on the negative side of the balance sheet.”

Alan joined the Theosophical Society in 1980 and, a year later, after reading The Inner Life by C. W. Leadbeater, he decided to adopt the vegetarian way of life in order not to be part of the karmic chain of killing (or hiring to kill) animals for food.  In 2003 he became a vegan, also for ethical reasons, setting aside eggs and dairy products because of their origin in mechanised, unnatural environments.

We are happy to share here a selection of Alan’s poems, all expressing respect for animals and their habits.  These poems and all Alan’s other poems, essays, stories and photo gallery can be seen on his Website entitled An Everywhere Oasis at www.alharris.com.

Photo to left: C. W. Leadbeater

Sentence

Back of our house

a lovable stray pooch,

young and off-white

with random black

Mendelian punctuation,

darts about and sniffs grassy clumps

until, eyeing a soggy tennis ball

wedged under the neighbor's fence,

she plucks it up in her teeth

and prances puppylike for attention

as if mankind needs to please play ball

(has she romped with children

before being dumped out of

their father's midnight-slinking car?),

seeming ignorant or heedless

that ball is not played

where she is going to go --

by way of famishing jaunts

through shrubby neighborhoods,

altercations with kept cats

and with collared mutts,

a trusting ride

in the dogcatcher's van,

and a meager feast or two

before the period

at the end

of her

sentence.

Animal Tao

A cat is mostly yin;
of the Cosmos she is the twin.
Like the mysterious Cosmic Laws,
she keeps well hidden her claws
until some urgent necessity.

A dog is thoroughly yang,
with his boisterous bark and his fang.
Ignoring the subtler laws
and concealing none of his flaws,
he pursues life and cats with avidity.

A dog is always searching,
but a cat is content with perching.
The dog loves to follow his nose,
while the cat simply sits there and -- knows.
Activity ends in tranquillity.

Tavern Talk

Did you ever look deeply
into the eye of a chicken?

No, you say,
they have
nothing between their eyes
but cartilage,
and you laugh at your little joke.

Did you ever look deeply
into the eye of a chicken?

Yes, you say, and
it came over and bought
me a drink,
and you laugh some
more.

Did you
ever look
deeply into
the eye
of a chicken?

No, you say, have you?

Yes, I have.

What did you see?

I saw a light like a little
egg-shaped sun,
and inside it were countless
smaller eggs.
It was like touching my eyeball
to a live wire,
and it lasted for only a split second,
but I saw infinity in the eye of a chicken.

Yeah, I saw that once in a waitress's eye,
you say with a snicker.

Same infinity I saw,
only I didn't have to leave a tip.

Interpreting Geese

A flock of Canada geese
flies overhead,
honking whenever
honks are needed.

One goose veers
away on its own
to the left.
Another splits right.

Zen awareness might
say, “Ah, yes: the
goose and the goose
and the flock. This is.”

A philosopher might
see three divergent
realities coming
into being above.

An ornithologist
might ahem and
expertly affirm, “Yes,
geese will do that.”

According to a poet:
“Feather-flung loners,
ecstatic with freedom, fly
straight to their unknowns.”

Hunters say blam.