final station of the cross

final station of the cross


She hangs suspended in space
Her head bowed with a crown of
carbon dioxide and CFCs
Her side speared by stripmines
abandoned drilling sites
nuclear waste depositories
Her faithful Whale children
beach themselves in desperate protest
but to no avail
Her faithful mountain keepers
come down from the Andes to
warn their wayward brothers
Her northern children cry out
from their irradiated Reindeer,
their disappearing Glaciers

and She cries out for Her lost children too
oh Florida Red Wolf! oh Arizona Jaguar!
oh Monk Seal! oh Heath Hen! She cries

where is my Mysterious Starling? my Great Elephantbird?
my Red Colobus Monkey? my Laughing Owl?
Clear Lake Splittail? Caspian Tiger?
Mexican Grizzly Bear? Spanish Wolf? Dwarf
Hippopotamus? Sumatran Lion? Eastern Elk?
LabradorDuck?JapaneseSeaLion?NewZealandQuail???

why can’t I find my Sea Mink? my Barbary Lion?
my Ivory-Billed Woodpecker? my Hopping Mouse?

why have my children forsaken me?

but only silence--
[silence]
echoes from extinction’s unmarked graves

and She dies more and more and more alone each hour
with none left to forgive the offending human child
judas to us all/ the mad marauder who
cannot wash his guilty hands in toxic waste
whose silver cities will be cast aside like sins whose
missile silos will no longer gleam in that dark hour who
too will die when She cries
IT IS FINISHED!
for he, the fool, is in his Mother’s womb



mary oishi
14 february 2005

Note: This poem will be in the 2007 Nuclear Resistance Calendar published by the Albuquerque Center for Peace & Justice.