Did You Hear the Loons? Do You?

1

You love canoeing. You've heard wolves before.
Or you'll hear loons freak, and alert their lakes
to light winged storms that swell your campsite's shore,
then mumble off in woods thin moonlight breaks.

2

We've heard them, both. Their cries are wild, as wild
as any native's cries. How well did you hear?
Strange as it seems, the wolf is woodland's child,
the great loon icon in Manitou's ear.

3

We stare in silence as loons, three, veer near
our island's campsite, to coast on through,
leaving you tranquil again, and coast clear.
"They are a family". They've dawned on you.

4

Ten years have come and gone, and nothing's changed.
The wolves still haunt their woods, the loons their bays
insinuating Nature's not deranged,
too long unconscious of our half-assed ways!

5

Ten years have come and gone. The CBC *
reports, "Some oil spill recontaminates
our shores, and loons die, washed up from the sea,
by scores, some rogue steamer's slick suffocates.

6

They try and save 1, scrub him down. I cringe.
That loon, all suds, beats his wings, wails in pitch.
Are we drunk on some Earth-destroying binge?
The poor loon sobs! I swear! "Son of a Bitch!"

© by Richard Vallance 2004

March 6 2004

 

* Every single word of this quatrain is based on fact. Just last evening, the 10 O'Clock News on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), reported that yet another foreign rogue container ship had deliberately dumped a vast oil slick off of Newfoundland's shores. Hundreds of seabirds, including scores and scores of loons, Common Loon and Arctic Loons alike, were gruesomely mired in oil, and the vast majority of them suffocated to death. As I watched the news report, I watched and saw the poor, helpless volunteers desperately trying to save the life of one Arctic Loon still struggling to breathe through the oily mess miring his feathers with guck. They had him pinned down in a large bucket of warm water full of suds, and one of the volunteers had to hold his very sharp beak closed, so the frantic bird would not bite any of the folks trying to save him in his terror. That loon was not merely howling. He was not merely wailing. He wasn't even just crying. He was SOBBING! It just broke my heart.

Is there no end to the boundless stupidity and heartlessness of humankind? Just exactly what kind of creatures ARE we? If we don't clean up our act soon, and once and for all time, for good, and learn to live in harmony with this Earth and all her living creatures, flora and fauna alike, who support us, I am afraid, as the old saying goes, "our goose is cooked."

Richard Vallance