Many of you
have heard of the mother orca, Tahlequah (J35), who carried her dead calf on her
head for 17 days and one thousand miles, near Victoria, B.C. The calf was born in a spot where
effluent from fish farms pours into the ocean, and she lived only a half hour. We followed Tahlequah's grief-stricken journey with aching hearts. Ken Balcomb, of the Center for Whale Research, who has followed her journey closely by boat, surmises that perhaps the calf decomposed, and she could no longer carry her.
We know that
animals grieve, but the extent of this whale’s mourning has not been seen
before. The mother orca used enormous stores of energy and determination, diving down each time the 400 pound calf fell, to bring her back to the surface. The pod circled around to help her; on day nine they began
taking turns carrying the calf, presumably to allow the mother to feed. Researchers tracked her journey.
On Sunday, we learned the calf was returned to the sea, and the mother swims on. But the problems which created this tragic story continue. And the whales' message to us is clear.
This pod of orcas are
telling us as plainly as they can that we have destroyed their habitat. Over-fishing, pollution and disease caused by fish farms along wild salmon migratory routes, warming seas and boat traffic all impact the southern pod's survival.
We have just learned that the Fraser River, a key starting point for the salmon migration, is now deemed to be too warm, which will also impact the salmon spawn.
Lack of salmon
results in orca miscarriages; two-thirds of their pregnancies have failed between
2007 and 2014. This calf was the first live birth since 2015.
“She (Tahlequah) is a
symbol of what we are doing wrong,” said Barbara King, the author of “How Animals Grieve”. This is such a large part of our grief, knowing we humans are responsible for the devastation of ecosystems across the planet.
(I can't believe the government is still dragging its heels on legislating fish farms onto land! And is proceeding with a pipeline no one wants.)
There are
only 75 orcas in the Salish sea, (near Victoria, B.C., the southern tip of Vancouver Island.) Researchers are now trying to save a four year old orca named Scarlet (J50), in the same pod. Her ribs are showing, and she is exhibiting
lethargic behaviour. She is the size of a two year old, and in the past two weeks has been showing increased signs of distress.
On Saturday Scarlet was darted with antibiotics, and First Nations are approaching with a boat loaded with live salmon in hopes of feeding her. Feeding a whale in the wild has never been attempted, but they feel time is running out for this youngster.
J50 and her mother J16
Our hearts breaking, some of
us wrote poems about Tahlequah and her calf. When I asked Toni and Susan if I might feature their
poems, Susan said she would only if I would include mine. So here we are: poems
of heartbreak. Mother Orca demonstrates beyond any doubt that animals feel
everything we feel, grieve as deeply as we do. They likely know they are dying. I cannot imagine a coastline without them.
The grief we
are feeling now is for Mother Orca, but also for the world being destroyed before our eyes by big money interests. It is wrong, and it is hard to bear.
“I’m a radical environmentalist; I think the sooner we asphyxiate in our own filth, the better. The world will do better without us. Maybe some fuzzy animals will go with us, but there’ll be plenty of other animals, and they’ll be back. Anthony Bourdain”
The moon is a peach in the sky.
The stars are sparkling grape tomatoes.
The cicadas are singing now.
They’ve emerged from their underground homes.
Watching the garden grow
in the dark of the universe.
I hear the nightly owl fluttering overhead.
With all the beauty around me
I mourn.
The orca’s skull can be seen beneath her blubber
as she carries her dead calf on her emaciated body.
The calf kept sinking as the mother
tried to push her towards the surface of the water.
So much beauty in this earth
and it is rotting beneath our feet.
The earth is an overripe peach
long past its maturity.
One day maybe we will be gone
and all that remains will be the skeletons of cities
poking through the overgrowth
with whales and deer and wolves
living in our place
roaming free and safe.
Sherry: I share your feelings, Toni. Thank you for this poem. "The earth is an overripe peach" is such a powerful line. I read the wildlife in Chernobyl is flourishing with the humans gone. There is hope in that.
Your second
poem about Tahlequah shares your deep grief so powerfully. Let's take a look:
The Wake
Tahlequah
carries her dead baby gently –
either by
the fin or on her nose,
refusing to
let go of the calf who died
within a
half hour of her birth.
The mother
kept using her nose to push the baby to the surface –
She is
hungry.
The bones of
her skull can be seen through her depleted blubber.
Salmon farms
are starving a race of beings out of existence,
Tahlequah
carries her dead baby,
day after
day.
Her pod is
helping her carry her baby
mourning the
loss of her baby with her.
They
communicate with each other
in a
complicated language only they can understand.
They mourn
in their unique rituals,
forming
circles around the mother –
Like a human
wake.
Like mothers
holding close the mother
whose baby
has died,
crooning and
holding the mother close.
We are
starving this race,
We are
depleting this race,
We are
lessening their birth rate.
We are
killing a race
more human
than we are ourselves
who think
only of ourselves,
not caring
who we kill
in our
killing of this planet.
Tahlequah
carries her baby gently.
The mother
continues to mourn.
Sherry: Wow, Toni. I feel this despair, this truth: all of the devastation has been for money and greed. What a species we are!
Toni: I wrote this poem because the situation breaks my heart. We did this. Plain and simple. This is our fault.
Sherry: That guilt is at the heart of my grief, for certain. Along with helplessness, because governments are not doing their part. Thank you, Toni, for putting it into words so clearly.
Then, came word of Tahlequah, no longer carrying her calf, swimming with her grieving heart up the coast, her baby forever gone. Any mother who has lost a child knows the depth of her pain. And so came your third poem, the final chapter in this story, while the future of the south coast orcas remains in question.
1000 Miles Later
Seventeen days 1,000 miles later
Tahlequah has dropped her dead calf.
Perhaps she is no longer sad and has
accepted the inevitability of death and life –
Perhaps she was where she wanted to bury
her dead calf – perhaps her heart said
Let go.
I picture the dead calf slowly sinking
to rest upon the bottom on the sand
asleep and at peace at last.
Tahlequah is healthy and leaping in the ocean.
The heart can only take so much grief
before it kills you
or sets you free.
We humans saw and wept with her.
Now perhaps she is telling us to move on,
to leap with joy, to wipe our tears.
I have been carrying my dead mother
for over a year.
The heart can only take so much grief
Before it kills you or sets you free.
I am sitting on my back porch
listening to the birds singing,
taking in the warmth of the sun,
watching the clouds dance overhead.
It is time.
It is time.
It is time.
Swim free, Mother Orca
onenews.com
Sherry: "The heart can only take so much grief." Indeed. We have lived a lifetime of grief during these heartrending days. Thank you for swimming with Tahlequah every mile of her journey, Toni. How many times can the heart break? I am sure my heart is losing count, as the whales die off, as the forests burn, and the wild animals flee before the flames.
My flagging heart responded, when I read Susan's poem, which offers us something to do besides despair: rally our hearts and minds, put on our marching boots. A glimmer of hope, something we can do, midst the grieving.
Dis ease hit all poets simultaneously.
Perhaps, we thought, the cure was writing depressing
poetry so no one could think we were untouched.
Though we did little else. We couldn’t imagine
what else to do beyond words, letters and protests—
that is, not until Orca whales carried their dead.
Carried their dead for days and weeks and maybe years,
carried them so everyone could see, like open
coffins forever, saying, See? We won’t keep this
out of sight. Look. Look at my calf. Look at your crimes.
See my community carry me when I’m tired.
And then it came to us: We could carry objects
more real than metaphor and signs. We could carry
our dead outside our laden emotions. We could
sanctuary and caravan, though we’ve lost
very little—not yet—but when the poor are gone
and the powerless fall silent, who will be next?
This is an old song, one the whales are carrying.
Songs without words. Living beings objectified.
Let’s lift up death. Refuse to bury it. Insist
on sight and smell. Press home. Ease on down the road.
We don't want wizards We want hearts, minds and courage.
Sherry: "We want hearts, minds and courage." How I love that! The whales are telling us as clearly as they can, without actually carrying placards, that these, indeed, are our crimes. That is the heartbreak, the guilt, the near-despair. Your poem reminded me: we also have hope, and can ACT to insist leaders do the right thing, or we will vote them out.
Susan: The only other time that I know of that the mother of a victim had such a mix of grief and rage that she held the body up for all to see was in the 1950s when, against all precedent, the mother of the butchered Emmett Till displayed his mangled body in an open casket. Her choice -- and media reporting it with pictures -- boosted the civil rights movement.
My poem draws the two together and, I hope, amplifies community support for this action. I know that protests due to death and martyrdom are not unusual. But display of the beloved's dead body raises the power ten-fold. You may remember Marc Anthony carrying Caesar's body into the marketplace and pointing out each knife wound. He drew mob behavior from the fickle crowd. I don't ask for mobs, but empathetic and reasoning crowds who won't hide the only things that climate-change deniers and environment exploiters might take as proof. We must change human behavior on a larger scale; nature is begging us as part of the family of earth.
Sherry: So well said, Susan. What is left of my tattered old heart broke over this whale. My poem was written out of my despair. A friend noted that this only adds to the trauma, and to also write about what we can do, in response. Good point. I did so, at the end of this feature. Truly, the fate of the earth rests in our human hands, hearts, minds, voices- and votes!
We start out whole,
losing pieces of ourselves
along the way
and then reclaiming them.
That is the journey.
I am collecting the last few bits,
before I fly into the light.
I pick them up:
ah, there you are!
and add them to my pack.
When I return,
I will change my shape.
I will be cattails,
standing dry, bent and broken
at the edge of the dried-up pond.
I will be wolf-pup,
peering fearfully
from my den,
knowing, to survive,
I must elude
Earth’s biggest enemy:
the predatory Two-Leggeds,
and they are
everywhere.
I fear
I will find a planet burning,
humans and animals
on the run.
I will be Tree,
gasping for air,
a sudden irradiation
as the orange tongues
lick greedily at my corpse.
I will be deer,
fleeing the flaming forests.
I will be mother orca, holding
my dead newborn calf
above the water
for seventeen days, grieving,
unable to let her go,
saying to we humans:
See! See what you have done!
I will be grief itself,
watching the world I love
burning itself up.
As I am now.
As I am now.
Sherry: Well. That came from my first grief, as I shared Mother Orca's mourning for her lost child. The whales will disappear from the news but not, hopefully, from our consciousness. I think of the moment when she, finally, exhausted, must have had to let her calf go. It is unbearable.
My plan is to keep contacting our local, regional and national officials to clamour for legislation to assist our planetary survival, and stop the destruction. I see other countries stepping up. Let's bombard our representatives with the changes we - and Mother Earth - need so badly. There are things we can do individually as well. They may seem small, but if billions of people do it, it adds up.
Thank you, Toni and Susan, for your heart-stirring poems about Tahlequah. They have touched our hearts.
What We Can
Do :
Implore your local, provincial / state,
and national representatives to:
* move all
fish farms onto land, away from salmon migration routes
* regulate and
limit fishing to restore the salmon population
* prohibit the
dumping of effluent / waste / pollution into the ocean
* legislate stiffer reduction of CO2
emissions
* increase
carbon taxes at all levels
* make the
largest corporate polluters, rather than taxpayers, pay to clean up their own messes; make them pay their fair share of taxes
* stop the
Site C project
* no
pipelines - oil dependency is a dead-end street - and a planet-deadening one
* develop
clean energy systems, which will create jobs
Other
countries are taking steps very
effectively to address climate change. In Beijing,
soldiers are planting millions of trees to counter air pollution. In Germany,
all new cars are mandated to be electric by 2030.
North
America, one of the worst polluters, is lagging far behind.
Individually, we can do a great deal
in our home communities: clearing streams, cleaning beaches, planting trees, banning single use
plastic, not buying / objecting to over-packaged goods, living mindfully. Reduce, re-use, recycle.
Pay to offset carbon emissions when we travel. Switching to a plant-based diet
is one of the most effective ways of lessening CO2 emissions. We can join First Nations as they protest pipelines and salmon farms.
We can use our votes to support politicians who support action on climate change, and not vote for the deniers. Good luck to us all.
SOURCES:
