Wild Places - Peter Fonken

[Larry Robinson]

Wild Places  

When wild places go,
we are all lost,
a little piece
of every bear,
of every human
living in the gray tenement
in the faceless city,
every insect
whose name we have never learned.
Something slips away from us,
like an exhaled breath,
never to return,
and, as with breath,
one gone is immaterial,
a thousand slipped away insignificant,
until there comes a point
when we know
we have few more left.
Of course I mourn each extinguishing
like the loss of an old friend
with whom there are stories
I will never get to share,
but my loss is trivial
compared to that of the rhino
who will never have a place
to raise her young,
to the redwood
whose first millennium of preparation
will be all for naught,
to the wind
who no longer finds the muskox
turned to face into the storm,
yet longs for the touch of fur,
the meeting of an old friend.
When wild places go,
we go,
one cell at a time,
but this is not just our dance,
not just our game to play.
Ours is but a bit part,
a supporting role,
and yet we have come to believe
we should take center stage.
No, I say,
let us go back,
back to being just another faint voice
in the cacophony of life,
back to there being wild places
that we dare not touch.
When wild places go,
we are all lost,
because without them
there is no place
for dreams to land,
there is no place
for hope to set her seed,
and take her slow time
to grow inside
each one of us.

	- Peter Fonken
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