Timko and Oogala

 

“The future looks bright for Timko and Oogala.”
  
So said the warm, white male voice
on Sunday night -
the Wonderful World in Living Color.
The hearty Eskimo(say Inuit) youngsters 
were now fully prepared to meet 
the rigors of the North
and thrive.
Next week we would thrill to see
Charlie the Cougar. Brute hunter,
cunning but never successful. (No sight of 
doe's blood\gashed throat
on Sunday night).

Timko's grasp is light on the ancient rifle 
in his lap; His gaze far across 
the open land, 10,000 feet or more.
The shell is in the chamber.

Oogala sees open water from her house 
all winter long.
She turns from the frosted window to CNN
and pours.

The last dogs howl for the children  
taken away to school.

Three hundred forty breeds of dog, 
but the snow bears will soon be gone
(like the ermine, the fox and honking geese).

The scientist laughs out loud,

“The earth will survive the 6th extinction, 
but we won't.”

Snow Bear (television) Two-part television show; aired on November 1 and 8, 1970. Directed by Gunther Von Fritsch. A polar bear cub is befriended by Timko, a teenage Eskimo boy, while he is on a year’s self-imposed exile from his community, learning the art of the hunt. The soon grown bear has to be returned to the wilds after it destroys the village’s meager supply of food. Stars Steve Kalcak, Rossman Peetook, Laura Itta. Filmed on location in Point Barrow and other Alaskan sites. Released for schools on 16mm film as The Track of the Giant Snow Bear. https://m.wikidata.org/wiki/Q72928840

 

My Winter Days

Coarse, blunt hairs sprout from the top
of my nose like the salt wind stunted
trees along Somes Sound.

Why they have started growing
out that way is a mystery to me,
another curse of my Winter days.

I make my wife promise that when I
am lost and mindless in a nursing home,
she will come and pluck them

One by one.

December 27, 2021

 

Penguins: An Anniversary Card

It was, of course, the picture that first attracted me; how

one moves away and one stands still. 

Which of us is which, I wonder?

That each day we struggle between the forces of life, green

and bearing up through the snow towards the sun,

and death, a quietude when all energy is expended

and space is the only sound;

That we all stagger between one of those gates

and the other, that is well known.

Some are moving forward and some are standing still. 

Some are waiting silently and some

are anxious to rush to the same conclusion.

To wait with patience upon the other, unmoving or declining,

 is love. 

So is being drawn forward by the hand (or wing)

across the landscape spangled with falling stars.

August 5, 2021

What We See, What We Know, What We Read.

 

If I see the gazelle step lightly thru the high grass,
pause and turn to leap away, I tell the story first
by firelight while the haunches broil.
The sun, the water, the birds in the air,
Mountains to the side and clouds above;
I see only the black eyes of the gazelle in the high grass.

We go down into earth together and the drums echo in the cave.
Here by flame light I sketch my prey alongside the 
bears and great cats in profile, one after the other.
Over there, the aurochs roar and the mammoths thunder – gone now.

Later, much later, I will face the lions and put arrow 
to their breast.  Then others will carve my bearded likeness 
and the cats, sleeping in the garden or chased by chariot. 
Across my muscled knees, the scratches record my glory, 
my name and those of my defeated enemies cast down before me.

The hunter lays aside his atl-atl 
and comes in from the sunlight, 
comes in thru the French doors to sit 
for his portrait on a hobby horse,
ruffles fall away from the sleeve where 
he points his baton West.

We think we can smell blood on his hands.



April 11, 2021
reading “Ways of Seeing” by John Berger

In The Bow

For Robert

Listen, Children, listen.
Quiet the roaring in your breast.
Grief is the privilege of the Living
and tomorrow.
Listen. Listen and hear
the wings whisper round his head
and feel the air move in their wake.

The door of the multiverse stands ajar
and beyond he can see
the radiance of the Tree of Life,
unseen since the closing of the garden gate.

The cells - good and bad - are working
together to help him chose.  Lungs
labor and heart swells slowly as
the doorway draws him near.

But he is like an infant who resists
their birth, rolls and pokes against
an unknown and the star filled world.
Guide and push and offer yourselves as the
great muscles of your body once guided a child.

He will not fail or falter.
He will not fall into the sea and be lost again.
He will not be forgotten.

Self will stand proud in the new land and
he will walk through the trees

down to the shore.

Woodstock, July 2019

What wren? What finch? what dove?
All the deer are stoned on lily blossoms
And the snakes take to the pools
At Opus 40,
Black sticks on the day-glo green.
Heat drives gnats to the shadows and
The pines slowly
                             ooze their
                                              ant trapping
                                                                   sap.

Little blonde heads break the turquoise plane.
The circus balls slowly perambulate the edge.
Ice tinkles; mothers laugh,
Daddydaddy floats regal
among splashing grandchildren,
noodles at head and foot.
The mountains lean in to see.

Seven
           Not three
                           Days of peace and love.

                                                                    for the Armstrongs

Birder

Behold the ortelan!
Caged and blinded from hatchling days
Force fed until your shit is haute cuisine.
Finally, mercifully, drowned in Armagnac
and served to the elite beneath their cap of shame.
Eaten from feet to beak.

You are no eagle, no hawk, no falcon.
At best, you may rise to the status of finches.
Be fast and sharp, like hummingbirds;
Be loud and black and proud like crows.
Be as persistent as woodpecker and
flock together for protection like sparrows.
Be as bright as cardinals and sing like nightingales.

For the birders are on the hunt
for the next innocent bird.