It’s the 11th hour of week 11. Time for the 11th poem.
Over the past few years, I’ve become increasingly sensitive to animals. It started when I became a mother and experienced my own animal self in deeply profound ways. Though being female automatically connects me with animals, who are viewed mostly as exploitative resources and/or collateral damage in the patriarchal project we call capitalism.
Not that I’m superior, and whenever I think I am, even for a moment, I set myself up for another reckoning like this one. To be human is to hold “the inescapable tension,” as Robin Wall Kimmerer described, “between honoring life around us and taking it in order to live.”
It’s got me thinking deeper about our desire for power and control, not just politically or ecologically, but as parents, partners, siblings, colleagues, and all the relationships we’re apart of, including the relationship we have with ourselves. How entangled everything is, and how it’s becoming increasingly more entangled. More on this later perhaps. For now, this is how it started for me…
Sacrifice
In the past, people made sacrifices
To their gods, capturing an animal
Laying it on an altar to be slaughtered
Sometimes burning or burying the
Animal whole. It was done to win over
A god’s favor or perhaps atone for
Their sins, as if the wild innocent being
Could somehow carry their blame
Allow them to face god or even them-
Selves again. And I thought to myself
Well good god, aren’t we better than
That now? Maybe we have evolved
After all, beyond such barbaric notions
Of the past. But as I walked in the
Forest today, it occurred to me, I live
On a plot of land that was once dense
Forest cradling diverse life. It was
Uprooted, razored down to the ground
To make this land viable and valuable
By human standards. How many
Were sacrificed for us to live here?
Maybe the animals found new homes
And food sources in nearby forests
But where will they go as we keep
Taking more and more? Everyday
Animals are being driven from
Everywhere. Even birds aren’t free
To soar the air anymore. If they dare
Fly within a large radius of an airport
They can be gassed, poisoned or
Shot right out of the sky. I’m talking
About loons, egrets, pelicans, storks
Starlings, geese, heron, hawks. I want
To acknowledge them all. Eagles, owls
Vultures, cranes, sandpipers, grebes
Blackbirds, cormorants. The ones
Who fill the air with music, who we
Once shared the treetops with, who
Taught us to fly, now dropping from
The skies – more than 100,000 birds
Every year – for getting in our way
How long till we’re alone here with
Just the things we own and can
Control? Without any wildness left?
We don’t look the animal in the eye or
Hold it in our arms. And instead of one
We slaughter them en masse, not as
Acts of divination but in the holy name
Of human industry and exceptionalism
Recently I saw a documentary about
The Bajau people of southeast Asia
Known as sea gypsies these ancient
Fishermen hold their breath for long
Stretches and walk on the bottom of
The sea to catch their fish. No gear
No weapons except a handheld spear
And the prowess of those who have
Lived “in the sea, for the sea” for
Thousands of years. These days they
Can’t survive. Big fishing industries
Have wiped out the waters, selling fish
So cheaply in supermarkets you’d think
Those brilliant, brazen beings were
Worthless. Desperate, some Bajau
Have resorted to using chemicals
And homemade bombs to catch the
Fish they need, knowing they are
Destroying the coral reefs, forever
Rendering them barren places where
Nothing can live. Sea turtles will stop
There on their epic voyages, following
Ancient pathways through the sea as
They’ve always done, and suddenly
Find no sea bed to graze on. Whales
Will wander in desolation. Fish will
Vanish. There will be nothing left for
Their children, not even a connection
To the sea that has always sustained
Them. I was disgusted when I saw
This, wondering how the Bajau who
Proclaim to have salt running through
Their veins can stoop to such levels
But I know I’m no different. I deal in
Money instead of blood but the stain
is there. I am stained from head to toe
With my cheap clothes and food, my
Piles of technological devices leaching
Chemicals into the seas and soil. I think
Just because my hands aren’t dirty
I’m blameless. No, I’m worse than the
Bajau who don’t pay others to do their
Dirty work of surviving in this world
Resources
Airports’ global bird slaughter – 100,000s gassed, shot, poisoned
Nearly 70,000 birds killed just in New York in attempt to clear safer path for planes
England and the licences it gives airports to kill birds 13km from airport boundary
70,000 birds killed for aviation safety (from 2017, the number of birds killed climbs every single year, so the number is closer to 100,000 now)
