Comments on: Harrier

By: christine

christine — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 03:12:32 +0000

I’ve read this poem a few times, and I’m struck by how much you gather in a small space – history of a family, the history of the land, science, animal behavior, thoughts about the military, so very thoughtful. I like the idea of not clinging to the past, as Dale mentions, but accepting what is, and living at peace with it. Really great poem.

Thanks for sharing the letter poem I wrote to Jo’s piece. It makes blogging more fun to respond with a poem, don’t you think? It’s more about reflecting back on the other how the work is perceived.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:02:19 +0000

deb – That book’s on my short list, too. The subject is something I think about a lot, actually – extreme biocentric conservationist though I might be, I find the prospect of a world without humans deeply unappetizing.

dale – “I have a deep deep mistrust of the longing to set things right by going back to original innocence.” Me too! Very well put. I think the goal of serious conservation should be the recovery of wildness wherever possible, not the restoration of some specific primeval state.

Laura – Thanks. I’m glad that image worked on a figurative level, though I think it really helps to be familiar with the bird (as I’m sure you are) and the way it looks and moves, especially with that flash of white.

Theriomorph, Fiona – Thanks for stopping by.

robin andrea – Good point about old longings.

I think many of these grassland species are declining here in the east precisely because the land is recovering from the high-point of intensive use 100 years ago. And returning to Dale’s point for a moment, it’s difficult for us to know what is right: to maintain old-field habitat for such species (as we have chosen to do on our land), or let it all go back to woods of some sort to try and improve habitat for forest-interior species, which are also beleagured.

By: robin andrea

robin andrea — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:58:47 +0000

I like thinking about the old longings, a preference for marshes or a time before all this light and drought. Perhaps a harrier can miss something that’s not been seen for a hundred years. It is something we share, that harrier and I.

Very fine poem, dave.

By: fiona robyn

fiona robyn — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:06:43 +0000

(o)

http://www.plantingwords.com/2008/09/leaving-stones.html

By: Theriomorph

Theriomorph — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 11:27:21 +0000

Gorgeous, Dave. I love this one.

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:38:49 +0000

Very nice, Dave. I like the idea of seeing the harrier as a magician’s handkerchief, a beautiful sort of distraction from whatever’s going on right in front of our eyes.

By: dale

dale — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:45:01 +0000

The yen to preserve the primeval is possibly the strongest card we hold in ecological politics, but I think it’s an essentially anti-ecological desire, denying interplay and participation, making nature only and always an object. And I have a deep deep mistrust of the longing to set things right by going back to original innocence. Somehow it always turns out that to get back to innocence something has to be killed.

So anyway, that’s by way of saying that I appreciate this very much.

By: deb

deb — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 19:42:47 +0000

“to make our peace” … ironically, I just started The World Without Us a couple of days ago. Under any circumstance this poem would have been haunting, but now… it tracks as well as spells.