Oh maybe something shorter after that.
Really is water.
Maybe a little poem--
a little poem called "The Natural World."
I got quite involved in this well for years
since my father was a conservationist
in this environment issue.
And this is sort of a short poem that came to me.
Not I hope after the issue became so current
when all the politicians were sort of bleating
to get on the bandwagon.
It's almost as good as law and order whatever that is.
Natural world.
The first part concerns the blue whale, the largest mammal
that ever lived.
And the second part, hawks.
The Earth is almost around.
The seas are curved and hug the Earth.
Both ends are crowned with ice.
The great blue whale swims near the syce,
his heart is warm and weighs 2,000 pounds.
His tongue weighs twice as much.
He weighs 150 tons.
There are so few of them left he often can't find a mate.
He drags a 6 foot 6 through icy waters, flukes spread crashing.
His brain is large enough for a man to sleep in.
On Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania,
thousands upon thousands of hawks in migration
were slaughtered for pleasure.
Gone North or South and spring and fall, Maryland and kestrel,
peregrine falcon, marsh hawk, red tailed, sharp tailed,
sharps shins swains and sock, golden eagle and osprey,
slaughtered for pleasure.
A form of war on animals I suppose.
There's a little line and oddly enough it's
in a sort of a bad poem by a good friend of mine named
John Ingersen.
He was saying I salute the monstrous tenderness of whales.
It's a strange Blakean thing to say.
If any of you are interested, there is a book now
or I mean a record put out by the New York Zoological Society
that has the songs, recorded songs of the humpback whale,
the love songs or mating songs.
And they've broken them down and found
that these creatures appear to actually have a language.