Storm

(Whooping Cranes)

Do you know me?

I  stand eye to eye with bulls in the pasture.
My wings stretch seven feet from black tip to black tip.
My legs dance to the songs of Spring.
My numbers grow,
but fearfully, a mere handful of fragile hundreds in all the world.

A century and a half ago I would leap into the air to join a cacophonous twenty thousand.
Our bugling calls resounding for miles  
to gather our throngs, young and old
to cross a continent.
To the plains of Canada in the Spring,
To the Gulf shores each Fall.

My story is tied back to that time of abundance
But stretches like a fraying thread
across an America that grew 
greedy for my feathers,
greedy for my eggs, 
greedy even for my flesh.
A country of little men
whose vision narrowed and dried up
like the marshes that once sustained me.
Until we were only fifteen. Only fifteen. 

There are heroes in every saga and I sing of ours too.
Before that fragile thread snapped
and drifted like fluff unseen on the wind,
our eggs were gathered as vital links to an unknowable future.
A few hatch each year.
Fed and preened by puppet hands,
coaxed to fly by whirring machines
that lead them once again to nesting grounds in the north
and at the right time back to resting grounds in the south.
A precious few hatch under their parents’ wings
and grow stronger and healthier for it.
Our peril, now, our heroes say, is our too familiar genes
that narrow the genetic gate through which we must all pass.

Do you know me?
Do you hear my call?
Do you realize its meaning?
I sing out for you.