THE HAUNTING OF PLANET EARTH

 

Image from Longwalker on facebook

On the wind, I hear the cries
of the ancestors, lamenting

the many deaths of All Our Relations:

bison and buffalo,

wolf brother, sister whale,

caribou and heartbeeste,

and the Great Auk,

vanishing from the land

the Old Ones knew,
into the spirit world

just beyond our view.

On the wind, ride the ghosts

of all the Disappeared,
so many, the ether is 

crowded with their souls,

like planet earth, 

stretched to her limits,

with too many of us to hold.

The Old Ones are sorrowing;

I can hear their ululations
on the breeze,

watching in pain as wild horses
with burning hooves flee

roaring flames; thirsty kangaroos

and koalas emerge from the holocaust.

The Ancestors' eyes hold a pain too deep for tears.

First the salmon begin to die out;

then brother bear starves slowly
till he is only skin and bone
where he falls that final time.

Mother Earth sends us her messages
in hundreds of dead birds

dropping from the sky,

no human taking the time
to stop and wonder why.

The Ancestors cannot comprehend
this earth-death that we have made:

children locked in cages at the border,
moaning "Papa!" and "Mamacita!"

as their hope fades day by day,
uncomforted, as a silent populace

turns their eyes away.

In the Old Ways, every creature

was cared for and respected:

whale and eagle, wolf and bear

were brothers and sisters 

of the human clan.

Children were cherished
as our future hope,

when we humans lived according 

to nature's plan.

The Age of Self has birthed a nightmare
for the non-human world,
who must view us 

as psychopathic monsters
living the ways of death,

non-nurturing of all the systems
that bring life,

chopping down the very trees

that give us breath.

The Old Ones are sorrowing;
I can hear their tears and ululations

as, one by one, all the wild things die.

On the wind, I hear their 

long song of farewell.

I hear the grief and heartbreak

in their cries, for all that is
swiftly vanishing from the land.

How we can do this
to our only home, I will never

understand.

for Brendan at earthweal: Haunted Wilderness

In my part of the world, the rich salmon stocks are declining rapidly, due to contamination by fish farms and the Department of Fisheries' failure to act responsibly. Now on Vancouver Island, bears are starving visibly. No salmon to eat. The way nature works, the bear eats the salmon; his droppings in the woods nourish the forest. So salmon become forest creatures in the cycle of growth, now interrupted by man's mismanagement and greed. There is a recent photo of a bear who, where he finally succumbed, was literally only his skin and bones. Heartbreaking. And enraging. That things have gotten this visibly bad and STILL governments refuse to take steps - caring more about re-election and keeping corporations happy than the survival of the natural world we all depend on. I imagine the horror in the eyes of the First People, watching this desecration from the spirit world. I don't have to go far to imagine the terror of the animals, fleeing wildfires, or dying in the flames; or slowly starving to death on a depleted landscape which offers less habitat every year in which to hide from their  human predators.