Unit 3: Selection Vocabulary 3

Having the opportunity to find fossilized shark teeth that have been in the waters for over millions of years was something I was ecstatic about!

I was not letting up, I knew I had to keep fighting for that shark. After what seemed like an eternity, the fisherman finally conceded and told me that I could set him free.

I had leafletted about animals in captivity and in vivisection labs; I had signed petitions against animal cruelty and protested at various sites where cruelty had been taking place, but until that day I hadn’t really concentrated my efforts on sharks.

I hope to one day soon be speaking at Congress on behalf of sharks and lobbying to bring change to the finning laws in our country.

The insidious revolt led by Buck had destroyed the solidarity of the team.

And even Billee, the good-natured, was less good-natured, and whined not half so placatingly as in former days.

He worked faithfully in the harness, for the toil had become a delight to him; yet it was a greater delight slyly to precipitate a fight amongst his mates and tangle the traces.

All that stirring of old instincts which at stated periods drives men out from the sounding cities to forest and plain to kill things by chemically propelled leaden pellets, the blood lust, the joy to kill—all this was Buck's, only it was infinitely more intimate.

And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

There’s a part of me that keeps mourning
for the soft cocoon where I lay,
a part of me that keeps pining
for the delicate chrysalis smashed and destroyed
before my eyes that day.

I’m tossed to and fro, from here to there,
caught between compulsions

I’m thrown left and right and back and forth,
longing for the freedom of flight and yet
craving those soft consolations.

When my soul broke free, a part of me
thrilled at the lift of its arc

All this makes me wonder greatly
about contrary desires.