conservation

 conserve the cousins

the bears ate of the holly berries

but left some, too,

the hemlock adelgid, on is own, 

just consumes the trees,

this time, in this place,

the zoologists and government policy

choose to save enough hemlocks

to make their future more certain,

turkeys roost at night in the top of a large hemlock

just up the creek from us,

who knows what absence will lose,

I like our species better when we conserve:

the trees, the wolf, the whale,

and help maintain the balances 

millennia of give and take have negotiated with the world.

by Henry H. Walker

November 26, ‘20