Elegy to Wild Salmon

 

 Dry temperatures and no rainfall mean not enough water in the rivers for the annual salmon migration.   Upwards of 80,000 thousand dead fish line the riverbank in Bella Bella, B.C. Migrations in other areas are   impacted as well. An ecological disaster.

Every fall we have watched in awe 
as you flung your mighty bodies
up the rocky passages,
making your migration
to spawn next year's 
hatchlings.

Bears grew fat
along the shore
when all was well.

But this year
all is not well.

The summer stretches into October.

Your wet channel grew dry;
the riverbed is now just rocks
covered with your bodies.

Farewell, farewell,
to nutrient-rich food
for bears and wolves
and eagles,
farewell
to big family dinners
for indigenous people,
who have lived respectfully
with salmon
for 10,000 years.

The First People of the land
never dreamed
there would come a time
of no more salmon.
The white man's greed
cares not for others' need.
I feel the shame.

We have dried up all the rain.
How do we now get the river
to return again?

Will I ever watch you fling yourself
upstream again,
amazed how high you leap
against the rushing
downward push
of the roaring current?

Some of us know
the collapse of this ecosystem
- a disaster -
will have a reach far beyond
next year's migration.
Our impact is having consequences
beyond my gloomiest
imagination. 

It is the saddest
of farewells.

It is amazing, given all of the extreme climate events, that world leaders are not pressing the panic button. Meanwhile insane men are pressing nuclear buttons, so maybe we won't have to worry about no more salmon. What a CRAZY world this is. I just learned that the last of the old growth is being made into WOOD CHIPS and sent to other countries. Not even being used for construction or industry here at home. When a writer tried to talk about the ecosystem to the CEO of a logging company in northern B.C., he repled, "We're making money, lady." And that is all that matters, to the greedy corporate mind. It seems we are a suicidal species, with deadly impact on all other beings.

for my prompt at earthweal: Wild Souls

Oh, My Love!

 

For the first time in his life,

the Way opened before him.

Heart wide, eyes clear,

he climbed the ladder

in the gallery. On the exhibit,

she had written one word.

Yes! he read, with joy

and Oh, my love! he replied.

for The Sunday Muse

Okay, Pussycat

More afraid of us, with good reason,

than we are of him, he crouches,

assessing the level of threat.

Okay, Pussycat, we're going.

This man is wise in the ways of the wild.

He carries only a camera, not a gun.

He leaves hastily upon encroaching

on a wild one's habitat.

Respect.

When wild creatures look at us,

I can see our betrayal of them

in their wary eyes.

The Two-Leggeds are heedless,

and we are everywhere.

There is no rain this fall.

Not enough water in the rivers.

Thousands of dead salmon litter the riverbanks.

Because we like our big trucks and cars

and can't connect the dots.

Humans need houses and more and more

and more land. Voracious, we grab it all,

the dominant arrogant species,

who refuse to hear the voices of the wild,

and so will one day finally realize:

we are all nature's creatures,

and will share the wild ones' fate.

For Shay's word list.

And sharing with earthweal's open link.

This Is What I Have Heard

 

This is what I have heard:

The seas will rise in a single night,
as high as apartment buildings,
and will sweep back out with everything
- armchairs, SUV's, bodies, trees -
in its voracious maw.

My sweet village will one day swim out to sea.
My shelf of books - the work of my lifetime -
with all my poems about the climate crisis
 - be warned!  I wrote fruitlessly, endlessly -
will make good reading for sharks.
It is possible the entire island might
one day disappear and the mainland
will become the new coast. (In fact,
a futurist once told me, when I lived there,
longing for the sea, that when the poles melt,
the ocean will roar through the Fraser Canyon,
and the Okanagan will become its shore.)

The time of fires and floods is at hand,
as the ancients prophesied. And still
we carry on as if we aren't walking
the fine line at the edge of a cliff,
in danger of falling. In danger of it
crumbling under us. In danger of
being swept away.

This is what I have heard:

Human nature learns everything
the hard way, and won't change
until forced to. I'd have hope
if we elected indigenous grandmothers
all over the world
to clean up this mess. Grandmothers
understand about cleaning up messes,
and how to nurture life so it can survive.

This is what I have heard:

Before the storm, all the chickens
found somewhere to hide. All the gulls
sat on the sand facing out to sea -
a clue that big winds were on their way.
A dolphin got swept in and left behind
on somebody's couch.
Many animals are moving north
to higher ground. Humans, who do not
prepare well ahead of time, cry
bitter tears at all the clean-up.
And, when the whole world
needs cleaning, how many will be left
to do the work of relearning
how to live on a finite planet
that can provide for our need,
but not our greed?

I took the first line from the poem "Rain at Night" by W.S. Merwin. For earthweal: A Lyre for a Changing Earth. The dolphin was poetic license. But I do wonder, as always, how many non-human sea and land creatures were impacted by the storm. The unseen, uncounted dead.

SEEKING SOLACE AT LOON LAKE

 

If there be loons here,

then, they are hiding,

perhaps in the tall fronds along the shore

where I walk no more

with you beside me.

Once we heard a beaver slap his tail

like cannon-shot,

the birds startling from the trees,

your ears perking up,

wolfish and knowing.

It is lonesome here,

without you,

my old pal.

Yet yesterday, I breathed in

a deep draught of dry, crackly leaves

and, in that moment,

was purely happy.

Life goes on.

We were two souls, travelling.

We are still two souls, travelling,

just on different planes,

and I can't find a loon anywhere,

for solace at Loon Lake.

A poem from 2015, to be shared with earthweal's open link, as this new October begins. The lagoon in Port Alberni is alongside a forest trail Pup and I walked so often through October afternoons.

The One Who Speaks of Pictures In the Sky

 

John Woods/Canadian Press photo

The One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky
can see the faces of the lost ones, the ones
who never made it home. Tears are sorrowing
for the children, whose pain, whose cries,
were not heard then, but are
still being felt and heard today.
He hears the voices of the ancestors,
grandfathers and grandmothers, on the wind,
crooning "Stand strong. Stand tall." 

With her papoose on her back, she sings
a soft lullaby for all the children
pulled from their mothers' arms,
taken to cruel, dark hallways far from home.
The small child on her back
waves a tiny hand. I think of
all the small hands and hearts
those years ago, and the black robes as cold
as ice who caused so much pain.

He speaks his pain with power and strength:
addressing the Monster that swallowed his youth
and tried to erase his culture. When he
returned, all grown, and stared at the school,
he did the impossible. "Monster,
I forgive you," he said. "This is where
I earned my diploma of survival."

I listen in awe at the stories of
a beautiful people, who have suffered
and overcome so much
and who still love to laugh.
I hear you. I see you. 
Your beauty, your courage, shines.
Your drum is the heartbeat
of Mother Earth. Your song is Truth.
May we mamalthni hear you well.

Today was the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.

The Honourable Murray Sinclair, speaking at the event, was introduced as the One Who Speaks of Pictures In the Sky. He was chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation commission.

The Monster refers to the powerful poem "Monster", about residential school, by survivor Dennis Saddleman.

Mamalthni is the Nuu-chah-nulth word for white people.

Somewhere You Took a Turning

 

Beached pilot whales

Somewhere
you took a wrong turning
and others followed.
You lie growling and clicking
on the sand,
at the mercy of the same species
who are trying to help
as destroyed the world
you once swam through
with ease.

A bucket of water
for momentary relief
will never be enough
to make reparation
for our fouling of
the seas.

Somewhere
we took a wrong turning
and others followed,
and now we can't seem 
to find a way

back to the garden
of that better
day.

230 pilot whales beached themselves in the second 
mass stranding event this past week in the
Australian state of Tasmania.

Getty image

Scientists say noise pollution, overfishing and warming seas - all human-caused factors - contribute to the many strandings seen along beaches in recent years. Half of the beached whales above are still alive and rescue efforts are being made, but the scope of suffering for the whales is devastating.

Shared with earthweal where we are doing an ekphrasis challenge as Brendan prepares for a major hurricane bearing down on the state of Florida.