TROPHIC CASCADE

                  TROPHIC CASCADE

                                      -   Camillle T. Dungy

After the reintroduction of gray wolves

to Yellowstone and, as anticipated, their culling

(culling = reduction of a wild animal population by selective slaughter)

of deer, trees grew beyond the deer stunt

of the midcentury. In their up reach

songbirds nested, who scattered

seed for underbrush, and in that cover

(underbrush= shrubs and small trees forming the undergrowth in a forest.)

warrened snowshoe hare. Weasel and water shrew

(rabbit warren=a network of interconnecting rabbit burrows.) ((an enclosed piece of land set aside for breeding game, especially rabbits.)

returned, also vole, and so came soon hawk

and falcon, bald eagle, kestrel, and with them

hawk shadow, falcon shadow. Eagle shade

and kestrel shade haunted newly berried

runnels where deer no longer rummaged, cautious

(runnel=rivulet, streamlet)

(rummage=search unsystematically and untidily through something)

as they were, now, of being surprised by wolves.

Berries brought bear, while undergrowth and willows,

growing now right down to the river, brought beavers,

who dam. Muskrats came to the dams, and tadpoles.

Came, too, the night song of the fathers

of tadpoles. With water striders, the dark

gray American dipper bobbed in fresh pooles

( bobbing or bobbed = to move or cause to move up and down repeatedly, as while floating in water.)

of the river, and fish stayed, and the bear, who

fished, also culled deer fawns and to their kill scraps

(fawn=a young deer in its first year.)

came vulture and coyote, long gone in the region

until now, and their scat scattered seed, and more

(coyote- kai·ow·tee)

(scat = Animal droppings)

trees, brush, and berries grew up along the river

that had run straight and and so flooded but thus dammed,

compelled to meander, is less prone to overrun. Don’t

(meander = follow a winding course)

(overrun = Spread over occupy)

you tell me this is not the same as my story. All this

life born from one hungry animal, this whole,

new landscape, the course of the river changed,

I Know this. I reintroduced myself to myself, this time

a mother. After which, nothing was ever the same.

         Falcon