5 Dec 2022 – Flight 05: Owl and Dickey Wolverine

Falling to Ground 

Eventually, all beings fall to ground. Those who fly eventually caress the earth. Humans usually bury their dead or scatter their ashes. For the last several weeks, our theme has been “Flight,” and we’ve looked at everything from poems about the thrill of flying to pilot lingo, ending last week with the Chairman’s verse about the aviation alphabet.

Today’s post is the final one on “Flight,” for the foreseeable future. Next week we’ll start focusing on a very different theme, but you’ll have to wait seven days to find out what it is. (That is a sneaky way to get you to read my weekly poetic offerings.) On this Monday, flight takes on a (mostly) nonhuman view, although a human remains the voice of the two poems.

I’ll quickly mention that one of the poems is mine – the first one. Read it quickly so that you make it without delay to the second one – a truly remarkable poem, “For the Last Wolverine,” by James Dickey

Dickey’s poem first appeared in print in May 1966 in The Atlantic. The YouTube clip was recorded in 1969. Read Dickey’s poem ever so carefully, and for heavens sake don’t skip any lines, especially the last third. Why? Dickey’s Wolverine is eerily prescient with its theme of extinction and how humankind will surely follow the thousands of creatures we drove, and still drive, in a horrible stream of lives lost. 

Why did I choose “For the Last Wolverine?” for our final flight? Read all the way to the last several lines of the poem, and you will have the answer. 

Remembering Flight #3

By CatherineStenzel

. . . Hold infinity in the curve of my wing

     and eternity in timeless flight

    I am the Owl who calls upon the night

speaks the unbelievers’ fright

Adapted from “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake

Once they heard my voice calling clear

They feared the sound, though everyone ends the same

I heard the Owl call my name

I lie shaded by memorial red pines

pristine perfection fallen to snow 

I’ve preened my feathers unruffled flow

Yellow eyes closed in semblance of sleep

one more sound lost from the Forest keep

Fifty million years converges evolution

eons yield raptors’ nascent plumage

Falling with the snow from frigid sky

not for prey this time, but to die

Remembering my first – my fledging flight

First from the nest’s embrace, tumbling out

I remember air lifting my wings

and falling off the edge of things

with no chart, flying blind

falling, falling into shudders

falling, falling, then tail’s strong rudder 

extended wingtips to gain height

remembering that baptism of flight

Remembering taloned feet clenched like fists

under wings’ leading-edge finesse

just this    

                                                     just this

Falling falling into flight

with a suchness blown from the night

propelled by instinct – dissecting air

I learned the arts of predator

I heard skittering moles

under eighteen inches of new snow

Now lying here in the white, light undone

I hear them coming on ten feet in a row

Will I be perfected on this side?

Will feathers turn gold now that I’ve died

Will I remember my night-long song

or will my voice go all silent – gone?

Will I turn my head two-seven round

or will that, too, be taken to the ground?

On my back, remembering branch and sky

wind riffling whispers what it was to fly

wings against the moon – no thought to die

Will you remember the gone and dead?

poised, noiseless wings arching o’er your head

as you murmur of flight in your dreams

penetrating life by being just who you seem 

I am the raptor hunting your witching ways

one who pursues hours sliding into days

turning black blades in twin yellow eyes

the engine that drives my raptor’s flight

to watch by sun and hunt by night

Talons rigid and cuttingly spread

Could you not remember such true dread?

your flesh to me, my wings for you

I will call out your name, piercing through

The red pine boughs no longer hold me up

jagged jack pine masts reveal the passage rough

saying to me, “This is enough. Enough.”

If I’m forgotten, what less of you?

For the Last Wolverine

By James L. Dickey

They will soon be down

To one, but he still will be

For a little while    still will be stopping

The flakes in the air with a look,

Surrounding himself with the silence

Of whitening snarls. Let him eat

The last red meal of the condemned

To extinction, tearing the guts

From an elk. Yet that is not enough

For me. I would have him eat

The heart, and from it, have an idea

Stream into his gnarling head

That he no longer has a thing

To lose, and so can walk

Out into the open, in the full

Pale of the sub-Arctic sun

Where a single spruce tree is dying

Higher and higher. Let him climb it

With all his meanness and strength.

Lord, we have come to the end

Of this kind of vision of heaven,

As the sky breaks open

Its fans around him and shimmers

And into its northern gates he rises

Snarling    complete    in the joy of a weasel

With an elk’s horned heart in his stomach

Looking straight into the eternal

Blue, where he hauls his kind. I would have it all

My way: at the top of that tree I place

The New World’s last eagle

Hunched in mangy feathers    giving

Up on the theory of flight.

Dear God of the wildness of poetry, let them mate

To the death in the rotten branches,

Let the tree sway and burst into flame

And mingle them, crackling with feathers,

In crownfire. Let something come

Of it    something gigantic    legendary

Rise beyond reason over hills

Of ice    SCREAMING    that it cannot die,

That it has come back, this time

On wings, and will spare no earthly thing:

That it will hover, made purely of northern

Lights, at dusk    and fall

On men building roads: will perch

On the moose’s horn like a falcon

Riding into battle    into holy war against

Screaming railroad crews: will pull

Whole traplines like fibres from the snow

In the long-jawed night of fur trappers.

But, small, filthy, unwinged,

You will soon be crouching

Alone, with maybe some dim racial notion

Of being the last, but none of how much

Your unnoticed going will mean:

How much the timid poem needs

The mindless explosion of your rage,

The glutton’s internal fire    the elk’s

Heart in the belly, sprouting wings,

The pact of the “blind swallowing

Thing,” with himself, to eat

The world, and not to be driven off it

Until it is gone, even if it takes

Forever. I take you as you are

And make of you what I will,

Skunk-bear, carcajou, bloodthirsty

Non-survivor.

                        Lord, let me die    but not die

Out.

Background

What if there were only 300 humans left in the world? Would this be cause for alarm? Is the fact that there are only 300 wolverines left on the planet any greater or lesser reason for concern?

The great horned owl is the most common owl of the Americas, easily recognizable because of the feather tufts on its head that resemble horns; the technical term for the tufts is “plumicorns.” The owl is a carnivore, and at most it weighs 6 pounds; however, its wingspan is 3 to 5 feet. This amazing bird’s life expectancy ranges from 5 to 15 years – fifteen to twenty-five years in captivity. This amazing creature is an apex predator and generally is not prey for others. 

These owls have no natural predators as adults, so most owls admitted to rehabilitation centers are the result of human-caused problems: hit by car, shot, electrocuted, caught in barbed wire, caught in leghold traps, West Nile virus, poison, etc. 

Owls do not have a good sense of smell, but they do have acute hearing and can hear sounds ten miles away. Owls have good eyesight. They see only black and white, but their eyes are 35 times more sensitive than a human’s. Owls cannot move their eyes up and down, nor side to side; however, they have evolved to turn their heads about 270 degrees. Their necks have 14 bones; a human’s neck has seven. Due to the shapes of their wings and softly fringed feather edges, the Great Horned Owl flies in near silence and take their prey by surprise. The impact of landing on the prey kills the prey. Although federal statues prohibit shooting or harassing Great Horned Owls, the birds are still persecuted by some for their predation of game birds and poultry. 

The Wolverine, also referred to as the glutton, carcajou, or quickhatch, is the largest land-dwelling species of the family Mustelidae. It is a muscular carnivore and a solitary animal. Wolverines are two to four feet long and weigh twenty to fifty pounds. Their gestation period is only 50 days or less.

Wolverines in the lower 48 states are under consideration for protection under the Endangered Species Act. Although the wolverine has very specific habitat needs, was never a common species, and was widely persecuted, the primary reason now for a threatened listing is climate change. The main immediate threat to the Wolverine is habitat loss due to forest clearing, and habitat fragmentation often associated with mineral extraction, forestry, and road creation.

It is estimated there are around 300 wolverines left, sparsely scattered across the Mountain West, including Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Their young depend on snowy, high-altitude habitat that could disappear as the climate warms.

Exploration 1: Stenzel anthropomorphizes the Owl. Is it presumptuous to put words into the mouths of nonhuman species? Why or why not? Dickey speaks to the Wolverine. Does this approach make better sense and better poetry?

Exploration 2: What does the elk symbolize in the Wolverine poem?

Exploration 3:  Please notice the endings of both poems. What can you say about their synergy?

Exploration 4:  Consider these three lines from Wolverine. How much will the Wolverine’s “Unnoticed going” mean?

Alone, with maybe some dim racial notion

Of being the last, but none of how much

Your unnoticed going will mean

Exploration 5: Imagine you are the last human on Earth. . . Will your going be unnoticed? What will it mean?