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Have you noticed?
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Where so many millions of powerful bawling beasts
lay down on the earth and died
it's hard to tell now
what's bone, and what merely
was once...
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...In the book of the earth it is written:
nothing can die.
In the book of the Sioux it is written:'
they have gone away into the earth to hide.
nothing will coax them out again
but the people dancing...
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...Have you noticed? how the rain
falls soft as the fall
of moccasins. Have you noticed?..
...the packs of yellow-eyed wolves that are also
have you noticed? gone now.
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...in a dream
I watched while, secretly
and with the tenderness of any caring woman,
a cow gave birth
to a red calf...
...in the fragrant grass
in the wild domains
of the prairie spring, and I asked them,
in my dream I knelt down and asked them
to make room for me.
Oh Mary, here you are always with questions and answers. You ask if there is room for yourself. Is there room on this planet for a species such as ours? Will there ever be enough room in the earth, in the grass, and in death? This leads me to another question: How can I make room for death and extinction, now this moment in my heart, for myself, for the buffalo, for the Passenger Pigeon, for the Carolina Parakeet, so that I may make room for life?
Where do you make room to ruminate over the losses of the past, which endure today?
I guess the answer is when I am reminded. I opened my new National Geographic to an opening photo of a small fox that is becoming extinct in Chile. Only 250 now exist at the writing of the article before the earthquake. Reforestation is expected in the U.S., but not in Chile. Currently I am reading about a species of fish that threatens to take over the Great Lakes of Michigan. As one small person it seems like it would be impossible to annihilate the fish we caught and change the habitat for sea gulls and other animals on the shores.
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