Where the Grizzly Once Walked
An Environmental Article from All-Creatures.org

From

Anonymous
March 2005


Breathing, walking and living free
Upon this earth you shared with man
A biotic brother, a fellow neighbor
A great spirit that lived pure with the land

I could see so much of ourselves in you
And so much of yourself in us
For you were breathed into life by the same great creator
And rose up from the same carbon dust

You were composed of the same basic blood and flesh
Encoded for by an uncannily similar ribonucleic mesh
Your cardiovascular pulses were the same lifeflow as mine
What separated you from us was barely visible a line

Your soul was poured from the same fountain
You drank the same waters clear
Your days were warmed by the same solar light
And overparabolized by the same atmosphere

You lived your life for all the same reasons
To live well and flourish through many seasons
To gambol and play in fields of green
To find a meal and refreshment in the giving stream

To rest peacefully on a moonlit night
To raise a family in the sun’s blessed light
Why was your life considered to be so of little worth?
Were you not as well a rightful citizen of Earth?

So much wisdom you have taught us through time
And so much more you had to share
If man had only better listened
And had more decency in himself to care

For your kind knew none of the evils of men
Your soul never felt greed, malice or sin
Your heart was pure and your mind was just
Yet you suffered under man’s wicked lust

Your kind was forgiving, wise and astute
Yet maligned by senseless fear and baseless repute
Your peaceful race fell to reckless hate
Yet your kind did nothing to deserve such a fate.

In the empty forests your spirit has now faded
Without you this biome is shattered and jaded
I walk in silence among the skeletons of trees
Chilled to the bone by the morning breeze

It whistles through the broken boughs
Across the desolate meadows it howls
Aside from this there is no other sound
Not a living thing stirs all around

You once gave this cold, dead wilderness a soul
You made this ecosystem, this biosphere whole
But nothing stirs or rises in the light of this new dawn
For long since has your presence from this barren world withdrawn

When man has achieved his final conquest
And all life on this earth is of pure human flesh
We will stare out across our landscape of steel
A habitat that humanity finds most ideal

But the earth will be void of all other life
Except its humanity swarming and rife
A species that has long since forgotten about the life that was wild
And all that was ever verdant, natural and beguiled

...And on this world's metallic surface the sunlight will glare
Upon the grey face of a planet one species could not learn to share


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