Tern

[firefangled]

You said extinction is natural,
one night in a crab shack, over
beers, where outside the dock lights
had lured the snook out from the Mangroves,
into the open shallow water.

Now the ice is melting
on the evening news.
We are told there is no doubt.
The eyes of the Bible are here, watching us
and it’s worse than they said ― there is film,
the Wordie ice shelf swallowed into the cool blue.

We watch polar bears on Planet Earth,
five years in the making, stepping through
the remaining slush, the frightening
sound one thousand pounds makes breaking until it’s found food
hides in the narration, hides in the digital distance
and the muting of copter blades.

I swam once for an hour as a child, to become a whale.
The bear swims for days; the tern glides to what end, in cool blue, in the gale.


© Copyright 2009

[PrinceMyshkin]

How tactfully this raises, but declines to answer, the assertion in the opening line. The final lines tell us all that we can know, which is nothing contrasted with what we need to know. It is as if the foreknowledge of our extinction at least in part extinguishes us in advance.

[DanBierce]

Nice. For me the last two lines make the poem.

[firefangled]

Thanks Prince and DB.

I made a change by remove the question mark at the end. I finished this late last night. Although it is meant to leave a question, syntactically the last line is not a question, but a statement.

[DanBierce]

A suggestion: I would delete "on Nova." It sounds too much like an add-on.

[jersea]

A topic deserving of multiple poems. Nice work.

[Delta40]

I love the second last line. invoking wonderful child recall of what we could be

[firefangled]

Originally Posted by DanBierce

A suggestion: I would delete "on Nova." It sounds too much like an add-on.

Thanks Jersea, Delta.

DB, I believe you are correct about "on Nova"

[Pendragon]

Echo the sediments that the last two lines make and excellent ending to a really great poem

[Virgil]

A very good poem F.F. I agree with Dan, those two closing lines are the most fascinating. I liked the openning stanza too.

[TheFifthElement]

I love this firefangled; I love the quiet unknowing about it. Something about this part made me shiver:

Originally Posted by firefangled

the remaining slush, the frightening
sound one thousand pounds makes breaking until it’s found food
hides in the narration, hides in the digital distance
and the muting of copter blades.

The whole poem reminded me of the work of Jean Sprackland, specifically Tilt. Have you read anything of hers? She's very good. You're very good

[paperleaves]

This is remarkable. As I mentioned to Sophia, I just finished writing a paper. A paper on the effectiveness of posing questions in poetry that can only be answered through interpretation of the previous implications hidden within other devices (whether syntactical or other) and this manages to perfectly express an inquisition behind your beautiful telling of truths. I love it. Seriously, ff, this is incredible. Thank you for sharing such a heartfelt poem that, I am sure, with its evocative message, made us lit netters think twice about what you were saying.


love
paper

[firefangled]

Thanks again everyone for you careful reading and comments.

[qimissung]

I love it too, firefangled, but when don't I love the words you write? You so gracefully explore the ideas of extinction, among the non-human and the human, you paint the saddest landscape of failure, and leave us with a million questions we should be asking ourselves.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the episode you're referring to, and it is the one that haunts me out of the whole series, too.

[ampoule]

I could not watch your third stanza but I could hear it. Haunting.

I used to dive into the pool at Schofield Barracks, waiting as long as possible, feeling for my gills. They never came so I would swim lap after lap. Never as aggressive as our name, The Sharks.