Dawn is a Place in the Sky | Endemic
Dawn is a Place In The Sky
above all of this
dawn is one ongoing phenomenon
I saw it
from airplane windows
as salmon honey spilled
over a cloud meadow
–
looking down at Earth
where night and day
are considered
separate ephemera
I saw clearly we
have always been on
the precipice of darkness
always at morning’s door
–
I do not say the world
is ending or a new world
is being born out
of despair or hope
just the truth
of immutable revolutions
Endemic
or
An open letter from the Devil’s Hole Pupfish
regarding funding for an ongoing effort
to save the species from extinction
We are thirty-five fish in a single pool
you call “Devil’s Hole”, National Park, Nevada.
This the only home we’ve ever known.
Human efforts brought us back from brink
of extinction, but some of you still wonder,
“why bother with such a little fish?”
–
We were not given the cleverness to invent
the atomic weapons you tested in our desert
or the wells that drank the aquifer beneath our pool
and yet we found this crevasse without assistance
of legs or wings, measuring 72 feet long by 11 feet wide
and deeper than any human knows:
the smallest range of any spined creature.
How much is an unsolved mystery worth to you?
How much is one answer worth
to the question “why are we here?”
How much would you pay
for proof that life is possible
in Earth’s most marginal places?
Can’t you see Earth
is also one blue pool?
Do you truly believe you have found a place
on life’s tapestry
where the fraying edge will never reach you?
We are not your children. You must remember,
we did not ask for your guardianship, we fell
into your hands because you gave our water
to your crops. Is our upkeep a greater burden
than adding another ghost to your menagerie?
After how many erasures is restitution due?
This is our only request:
do not collect us as curios of a dying planet.
Return the treasures you have taken.
Frederick Livingston is the author of the poetry collection “The Moon and Other Fruits” (Legacy Book Press 20203), as well as numerous articles and poems found in literary magazines, scientific journals, and public spaces. He grew from the southern tip of the Salish Sea in Washington State and has followed a journey as an ecologist, experiential educator and peacebuilder across the world ever since. Compelled by the power of metaphor to shape our world, he strives to plant seeds of a more fruitful future. More info at fredericklivingston.com.