Migration Endangered

[hawked]

Migration Endangered
An ebb and flow of life
from season to season
drawn by instinct
across the miles
engendering the future
despite political mire,
encroaching ignorance,
altered landscapes,
genetic bottleneck,
and towering obstruction

a bi-annual flight
faltering
explicably correlated
to a faltering respect
for the paths others must take,
to our connection
still they fly
to the last one
cannot achieve lift
nor find another
because of us

[e-piph[lol]]

very mysterious end mood to this piece. man is such a bloody space hog, isn't he?

[hawked]

e-piph - I'm not usually prone to ending what I write with biting commentary, I'm usually more inclined to be cynical up front and end with hope. I didn't really realize that until you pointed it out.

The plague of development is scary indeed.

[AlluraD]

Beautiful and thoughtful write...don't get me started on man's destructive ignorance...or how carelessly we, as a species, destroy everything in our path.

[Michael]

don't get me started on man's destructive ignorance.
Too late for me. It seems I was born “started on man’s destructive ignorance”.

hawked, this didactic piece is appropriate in this day of urban sprawl and the extension of urban limit lines.

We here in Contra Costa County in Northern California recently voted to extend our urban limit line to enable further development. Enable further development! There’s only one kind of green that some appreciate.

I was raised and born in Connecticut, not necessarily in that order, and was shocked when I moved to California five years ago. Owning a home that sat on ¾ of an acre of land in Connecticut was considered owning a small home.

Here, my property line is my neighbor’s wall. They don’t speak of fractions of acres here. They speak of fractions of feet.

We human beings are overcrowded. Those who lived here before us are all but wiped out so that we can become overcrowded.

We also offer those who are still lucky enough to have avoided extinction our automobile exhaust and factory pollution of their air, land and water. As you point out, we don’t mind encroaching on their habitats.

This is what I see in “Migration Endangered”.

genetic bottleneck,
and towering obstruction

…a faltering respect
for the paths others must take,

The mixed metaphor in the first passage and the allegorical quality of the second serve to create more power in an already powerful message.

I also was moved by the way you reached a crescendo with the list that eventually ends the first stanza.

I guess I was moved by the whole thing.

[AlluraD]

I will only say that the more we learn, the more responsibility we have to take.

[hawked]

Thank you Michael and AlluraD,

We moved into our house in Central Pa 7 years ago and just within this year several tracts of property that were vacant with woody vegetation returning to have been slated for development (one has already started). I fear that it may get worse, but I'm trying to make my voice heard through a local land trust and by communicating with my neighbors (most are not in favor of development).

Obviously, this poem was born from my passion for birds, but certainly the meaning radiates out to other fauna (and flora).

This is but one way for me to vent my rage at man's destructive abilities. The other ways are to increase my responsibilities as a steward/gaurdian/humble and miniscult strand in the web.