Marsh Star – 28 June 2021
Is it true that most of us rarely compare ourselves with wild creatures? I think so. Yes, rare individuals have an affinity for the natural world, and they even spend tremendous effort attempting to protect it. But it’s also true that some such well-meaning folks continue to believe that we are separate from the un-man-made our artificial viewpoint. I don’t know what to make of this, especially up here where natural realities slap us upside our heads. Think severe weather, floods, droughts, Forest fires, and more events out of our control – except for the damage we cause.
orest fires, and more events out of our control – except for the damage we cause.
We are not separate. Neither are we one with the natural world. We are interconnected, each affecting the other. That’s a theme you will see more of in coming months.
If you follow my posts, you know that I frequently write about wild animals and settings like Beltrami Island Forest. If these aren’t to your liking, just read my poems that are on other subjects which I promise to present. Just so you know, I’m getting tired of featuring other people’s work (guest poets like Emerson and Horace and more modern verse-makers). I want to concentrate on my own poetry, so like it or not, that’s what you will begin to see more often, as evidenced by this post and those of the last two weeks. I hope you find pleasure and insight caught in my heart-work.
Star Nose
I never told -never - not even once
because then all of it would disappear
Alone again, staring in that mirror
CS – The One
Early this evening, at the edge of a Forest marsh
I come upon a star-nosed mole
Ants’ mandibles cut one at a time
each so slight – a belly edge-slash
together make one star-crossed wound
Black-and-white vision shaded, now lidded blind
Tiny mouth bathed in capillary rivulets
Ants digesting bits of holy mole
My chest swells, arrows indignation at the largest ant
I slide protective fingers beneath her lifting
affection wells up weeping
Blood Speckles coat and five-inch fingers
My five smear with her scarce blood released
Her haunt is underground as good as dark
Arising from coarse soil and earth clods burrowed
into shadowed light where some raptor sites
Eighteen inches’ dirt could have saved her
from an offering as a noble bird’s repast
May spread unconscious one week ago
Nearby, newborn pups may curl in darkness
two inches long, hairless, hungry
newly emerged from forty days’ gestation
three weeks feeding
not enough to fend off dying
unsentimental by nature’s reckoning
Natural double bond – eating, eaten – most True
Heart-attachments all delusion and mostly greed
Ordinary earth rules are the best and most coherent
No obscuring words – kindness not even a wispy notion
A story never told – not even once
A story of a starry nose and her pups
But they are no story, they simply are
where no one waits or wants
no one departs or arrives
Stay with such arising
until you are released
returning as a fragment
to the whole
Troubled by ants no more
Background
I really don’t remember where the germ for this poem popped into my brain, so I can’t give you any interesting backstory. I live in a grand, old, boreal Forest where star-nosed moles still find suitable habitat along the marshes bordering the pines. The moles here live at the very edge of their range. Seeing a mole is not all that uncommon, yet it is extraordinary. Encounters with them are past imagining. How do such creatures survive our winters, and our summer droughts. With our fragile shelters, supply-line food, and clothing made in China, we exist tenuously, but seldom are aware of our propped-up lives. Amazon has created this illusion, as have social media, smart phones, and air travel. Not even a long pandemic can stop deliveries to our doors. We take all our unearned privileges as our birthright. What is a mole’s opinion of such delusions? Of course, she has none. Which worldview will serve us best in the long-term?
Exploration 1: Among the many species that need help to survive, are moles worth saving? Are some moles more worthy of saving than others. Why? Why not?
Exploration 2: Is it possible for human beings to “just live,” “just exist”? Provide the logic for your opinion.
Exploration 3: Rank in a hierarchy which creatures and features of the world are most worth “saving”: polar bears, dogs, wolves, moles, Mt. Rushmore, redwoods, kittens, the Mississippi River. What values did you use in your listing?
1. I don't see that moles are endangered as a species. Individual moles must avoid bar fights since even a light blow to their sensitive nose can result in instant death. I believe all moles are equally worth saving. No special reason why.
ReplyDelete2. We are just living" even if we tie ourselves up in knots over sports, religion or politics. If you mean can we live as the animals do, I don't think we can. Perhaps a monk in meditation can do it for a short period. Our brains are too big to run without a buzz and a hum. The shelters and supply lines our busy brains have created are much better at protecting and feeding us than even the remarkable adaptations of the star nosed mole.
3. I'm a hoarder. I want to save everything. But we can't. I read that 99% of all species that have ever existed on earth have gone extinct. Mt. Rushmore will erode, the Mississippi will silt up, and even you and I will eventually have to shift to other digs.
Your "answers" are meant for exploration as much or more than the original explorations at the end of the post. I must percolate before I reply further. Plenty to burrow into.
Delete1) Of course moles are worth saving! I love star-nosed moles (especially when they inexplicably come out in the winter!), but that's not the point. Everything is worth saving as everything is connected as you pointed out so well. The earth is a (not so well balanced now) web where everything connects to and is a part of everything else.
ReplyDelete2) To "just live", "just exist" is all anything does. There are impacts to how humans live just as there are impacts to the earth to how any living thing lives its life. Humans can steer how severe our impact is (read diet, garbage, climate change ...), but eventually, one way or another, the earth will find its own balance.
3) I, like Chairman Joe, want to save everything. I want the piping plover eggs to hatch and the chicks to fledge, but I can't blame the fox or gulls from eating them given the chance. However there are far fewer plovers than foxes or gulls. Plovers suffer from too many people and foxes and gulls have done well. So to save the plovers, one could kill the fox or prevent the gulls from the area using strings across the sand. Humans find ourselves in judgement calls like this as a result of our own sheer numbers. Sooner or later, again as Chairman Joe points out, the earth will find it's own balance. However, until that time, I say we do what we can to fix our mistakes.
Gretchen M.
PS How nice you are posting your own work!