From Lonely Ivory to Orange Rage
There is nothing more,
that can be said,
Or done,
To save us, and our fellow creatures,
from ourselves, and our rendezvous with destiny.
We can only grieve, for a soon to be, lost world.
The quest for palm-oil plantations is relentless,
Beckoned onward, by cosmetics,
and processed food consumption.
The sound of heavy machinery permeates the Borneo air.
Anger, raw emotion, thrust the large primate forward.
Using long aggressive strides atop its felled tree trunk,
The orange, spindly-arm ape defiantly and determinately
approaches the blade of the big forest destroyer.
With a rapid blow to the blade it strikes and tumbles
Back down to the log-strewn debris of fallen timber.
It sullenly arises to its feet and stumbles defeatedly away.
Who cries for the Orangutan’s lost habitat?
Where is the sorrow of the grief stricken,
Who oppose these invaders and pervaders
of crimes against the web of life?
The quest for fossil fuel sources is relentless.
The seismic air gun blasts from exploratory ships,
penetrate the deepest seas of the Atlantic.
A mammoth sized, 100-year old creature
glides through the blue, migrating to polar seas.
Startled, stressed, and confused by these
ambient reverberations, that obliterate the
sweet songs of distant relations.
The deeply scarred mother and calf dodge an
array of fast moving commercial factory ships.
They pass a Right Whale as it struggles to
Free itself of entangled fishing net gear.
Where are the sea captains to be found,
who cry out to protest the treacherous habitat
Navigated daily by the Baleen Whales?
The quest for minerals and rare-earth elements is relentless.
Global technology is thirsty for new raw materials,
to build an emerging green-energy platform.
The blasting, scraping, and drilling sounds
of mining operations invades the bucolic,
lush land of southwestern China.
A herd of 15 giants begins a 300-mile trek northward,
to escape a land supposedly conserved for their well-being.
Led by “Broken Trunk”, and monitored by drones
circling above, they plod through orchards,
rubber plantations, tea fields and towns.
“Civilization” is awe-struck by the spectacle
of their incredible odyssey.
What restlessness motivates this extended family,
Including one newborn, forward, toward the unknown?
Fight of the great ape,
It is not.
But is it the flight of the giants?
Where is the tear shed for the Asian Elephant’s lost habitat?
Following the creed of Native Americans,
We must look and listen to wildlife in a
New, Reverent, and perhaps Mystical way.
Using senses we have long lost through atrophy,
They send us an urgent warning:
“Your rapacious appetites
to consume, must be quelled.”
Over eleven thousands of years,
Our Wild Planet achieved a delicate balance
For the complex web of all life forms,
Including a stable global climate for that life.
Man’s dominance has upended this harmonious balance
Of the Holocene Epoch in only a few hundred years,
A mere blink of geological time.
It cannot continue.
It must not continue.
We are the stewards of the Planet and of
All God’s Creatures, both Great and Small:
Tree Dwellers, Swimmers, Plodders, and Flyers.
Our Duty for their Survival and of Ourselves
is owed to the
Vast and Ancient Cosmos,
From which we arise.
The Second World War comes abruptly to an end,
And the Atomic Age begins with
The second ever nuclear blast,
used destructively by Man.
The bomb duo crushes two cities and 200,000 people.
One continent away from this radioactive fallout,
The last stand of oak trees are felled in the
swamps of the great bottomland forest.
All for elegant, sewing machine cabinetry.
And from this flattened primeval forest,
the very last Ivory Billed Woodpecker
calls out her final sad refrain for any
nearby soulmate who may be listening.
“Kent-kent” she cries.
The sound of silence is the reply.
“Kent-kent”, she cries again.
No other Lord God Bird is listening,
Nor Humanity.
__________________________________________________________________________
* This poem was published in Maryland Bards Poetry Review 2023 *
D W Orr
Environmentalist, Weimaraner/Dachshund Companion, Photographer, and Poet-Provocateur
Harford County, Maryland,
Here, where it all began, 253 years ago, in the USA
May 20, 2022
“Rage Against the Machine” - Orangutan attacks mechanical digger destroying its habitat in Borneo in 2018. Credit: International Animal Rescue.
“Queen of the High Seas” by D. W. Orr Photography
A herd of 14 elephants roaming around Manmai Village in Menghai County, southwest China's Yunnan Province, May 6, 2019.
Credit: Photo by Wen Huan/Southern Weekly/VCG via Getty Images.
Composite Image: Left - Early logging days in Louisiana. Right - Female Ivory-Bill returning to nest, 1935.
Left: Corbis Historical via Getty Images / Right: Photo by Arthur A. Allen
“Sonny Boy”. The only Ivory-billed Woodpecker (not fledged) ever banded. Image by James Tanner. March 6, 1938.
A male Ivory-billed Woodpecker flying across the swamp in search of beetle grubs for food in large old dead trees.
Known as the "Lord God Bird".
Painting by Larry Chandler.
“Listen to the Wildlife” by D. W. Orr Photography
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The Poet-Provocateur
”The Man who sees well beyond the day-to-day Bullshit”
~ D. W. Orr
“To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one”
~ John Ruskin