Truth: Warning: Distressing to animal lovers

Bear cub found clinging to dead mother bear

near Tofino

CBC News story / Jennifer Steven photo

Mother bear dead, lying on the shore,

whimpering cub still clinging to her teat,
growing weaker; he cannot comprehend
that the source of all nourishment,
comfort and protection is gone.

I grieve; I grieve
for all the wild ones
suffering at our hands
as we encroach upon the land

A family of wolves is
running for their lives;
the whirr of helicopter blades above
chasing them across the prairie.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Bang. Bang. Bang.

And seven members of a family
that loved their lives
lie bleeding where they fall.

Do the men with guns have hearts?
How do they wrap this in their minds,
when everything alive
just wants to live?

The black cliffs above
have stood for a million years,
the dark green trees
rooted, silent sentinels,
saved from the saw
only by the steepness 

of their slopes,

as, below,  all the old growth 
falls.

The Old Ones say there was a time
when the salmon were so plentiful
The People could walk upon their backs,
and the prairie grasses were dotted
with buffalo as far as the eye could see.

Now the buffalo are gone,
and the salmon are dying:
riddled with disease, lesions, tumours,
full of contaminants, and radiation.

Whales wash up on shore
with stomachs full of plastic
from the ocean we have turned
into a garbage dump.

I do not have years long enough
for all this grieving.

In an eyeblink in the annals of time,
we took healthy abundance,
the interdependence of all living things,
and turned it into misery.

Now all the wild things
have questions in their eyes
and sorrow in their cries,
like the teardrops in my heart.

We took abundance
and turned it into misery
through greed and love of money.
A truth so hard to bear.

I grow old, I grow old,
and all my hopes
are slowly growing cold.

John Forde with cub / Jennifer Steven photo

A local man found  a dead mother bear, her cub still clinging to her teat, a few days ago on a small beach on one of the uninhabited islands. He took the cub to a wildlife rehabilitation centre and it will be released back into the wild once it is big enough to survive, in eighteen months. The caregivers distance themselves from the bear, to ensure it can be released into the wild when it is time.

Poor little bear. He didnt have much time left when he was found so I am thankful to our local hero, John Forde, for rescuing the little guy.

I read that humans evolved around 200,000 years ago, and “civilization”, as we know it, about 6000 years ago. The Industrial Revolution, where we took a departure from stewarding resources to ravaging them for profit, began in the 1800’s. In just two hundred years, a mere eye-blink, we have created this mess, through greed and love of money, on a planet that thrived for millions of years.

As we have all the information, and proof we have over-burdened this planet before our eyes, it boggles the mind to see corporations and legislators still putting profit before planetary survival.

One wants to think we will turn things around in time. But we are already so overdue, and things appear to be getting worse, at least in North America. The earth takes ten million years to recover from a mass extinction. Maybe next time around, humankind will get it right?

A depressing post. But, sadly, true. For Susan’sprompt at Midweek Motif: Truth

Source of facts here

News story about the baby bear cub here