Someone to look up and notice that the tree blossoms
aren’t wild with bees this year,
alive with buzz and dance and drone,
the way they used to be.
What’s different now? What happened?
And remember the butterflies, languidly loping,
clustering around their favorites in the back of the garden?
When was the last time we saw more than
an occasional one?
And Bumble Bee Watch saying, Send us your pictures!
There’s more than one Bumble Bee, did you know?
Yellow head bumble bee, and yellow faced (different!),
black tailed bumble bee, and fuzzy horned…We’ll help you identify!
So many different species, many now rarely seen.
For a friend to remind us, hey everybody!
Turn out your outside lights tonight!
While you sleep bird migrations are moving overhead,
navigating among the stars.
For the tree guy to walk around the yard showing you
the Western hemlocks, blight starting on the cut limb scars.
And see that? So many small pinecones? That’s actually
distress — too many dry summers, dry years, in a row.
For your cousin mourning the wild berries he used to forage
next to where they just clear-cut the forest, then they doused it in herbicides
to prepare for the Christmas tree farm moving in—
not safe to eat those berries anymore.
For all of us watching for the European green crab (Report immediately!),
infiltrating, shore by shore, outer Coast to inner Sound.
(Heads up, they’re not necessarily green: juveniles can change color
with every molt. It’s the “marginal teeth” by the eye that confirms it:
from each eye, count outward: 5 little spikes.)
It’s over 100 years of salmon loss, dwindling—
and the strength of the tribes mourning, demanding—
until the four dams on the Klamath River are removed (just now!)—
and the salmon from the sea already returning,
already finding their way home.
—
Sierra Nelson is a Seattle-based poet, essayist, and performance artist. Nelson’s books include The Lachrymose Report (PoetryNW Editions) and collaborative I Take Back the Sponge Cake (Rose Metal Press), and editor of Three Hearts: An Anthology of Cephalopod Poetry (World Enough Writers). A MacDowell Fellow and Carolyn Kizer Prize winner, Nelson’s work has appeared in King County Buses, the Seattle Aquarium, Slovenian Natural History Museum, Cascadia Field Guide, and I Sing the Salmon Home anthology.
