From Beneath It Devours: music

when one studies the history of ecology
one comes to the conclusion that progressively
we see less and less of what was once seen
of the wild
each generation sees fewer birds than the last
hears fewer songs in the forest
sees fewer flowers
hears fewer less intense song
and buzz and insect din

each generation is ignorant of the intensity
experienced by the last one
so that the smallest victories
feel monumental
yet they cannot know what once was
because they have no way to
they havent asked
and so each generation lowers their expectations
unknowingly
of what life in the wild might be
the intensity of song
and color and profusion

it is only by reading the naturalist
experience
of the past
that they could come to know
but the great sadness of such knowledge
keeps us from even trying

to know how the sound of and
eastern forest at dawn
would have deafened you
and the flocks of birds
would have blackened the sky
to make you tremble

..........

i wonder
if men love now as they did
in such lost times?
would it destroy you to know
such a loss
so much that you could not bear to live?
has love
over time become less
beautiful and intense?
am i even capable now...
is all of this now artifice?
as in the past is was
perhaps vast and natural and
the expanse of it would have made you tremble
just to be in its vicinity?
is the love i feel
the love i have poured onto boys
the love i sponge from bucket on your skin...
a paltry pitiable thing?
compared to antediluvian rights
of love
the love men felt for each other
then?
am i capable of that
as they were?

..........

if you knew what we had lost
would you be able to keep going?

..........

flocks of passenger pigeons once spread as far as one could see when they passed. they were quite possibly the most numerous vertebrate land animal on the planet. now, there are none, because of us.

once the flocks of millions had reached a critically low point, the females stopped brooding their eggs. you see, they needed enormous colonies to reproduce and feel safe from predators. once they had reached the low number, they stopped breeding in the wild, and that was the end. we had simply killed to many of them, and they gave up.

..........