Part I. When the Saguaro Cactus Blooms
“All mountains everywhere are being worn down by frost, snow and ice.”
“In the brief arctic summer grasses thrive, but too little energy reaches the ground for trees to grow.”
“When Nubian Ibex dual with their horns, the tussles can last up to an hour if the opponents are evenly matched.”
“Rainforest covers only three percent of the Earth, but contains more than half its plants and animals”
“The Shark is faster on a straight course, but can’t turn as sharply as a seal.”
“Throughout much of nature, life is built on decay.”
“Earth’s journey round the sun creates the four seasons, in most places. In the tropics, the sun strikes the earth head- on year round, temperatures barely change.”
“The Great Island of New Guinea harbors forty-two species of birds of paradise, each more bizarre than the last.”
“As always, where life thrives, trouble follows.”
“Each year a single tree can **** up hundreds of tons of water through the roots, but the trees can’t use all this water so much of it returns to the air as vapor from the leaves on the branches”
“Every year three-million caribou migrate across the frozen Canadian Tundra. Some herds travel over two-thousand miles a year in search of fresh pastures. This is the longest over-land migration of any animal.”
Part II. And Your Bird Can Sing
From my position as being something
Other than what I am now, I saw
the planet Earth which is too impossible to be true.
I saw that land never stands above water.
Water simply allows the tired earth to rest upon its shoulders.
I see places where nothing is alive, save the maggots that feed off themselves,
amongst the cathedral of stalactites and stalagmites and lakes of acid.
No one ever said Hell wouldn’t be beautiful.
I see what was once mountains, now little more than slender, awkward
pillars into the sky. Withered away by an unwavering wind
That blew rigid rock as easy as it might blow
a leaf on the streets of city.
I see that spring even touches the most arctic of locals.
and that you can freeze in a desert that you can fry in.
I see for the first time, the tree as the inverse of itself;
branches into sky, roots into earth.
And I suddenly question paper and hard-wood floors.
And animals,
which we so often chose to deny as our neighbors and brethren.
I met with the Amur Leopard, rare as jewel,
Never before seen,
Destined to lose his home or his fur coat
To the likes of a Russian czarina.
I laugh at the penguin, the sausage of the bird family
and marvel at its audacity to survive
in places its unthreatening, unimpressive body should not.
And in the shark’s eye I saw, as it leaped out of the water
finally engulfing the once allusive seal,
the grace of god, the face of ******
at 1/50th of the normal speed.
I came across baboons wading through flooded plains
walking upright through the shallow waters,
holding their young above the depths,
predecessors to a two-legged, less noble cousin.
I witnessed nearly every animal fight each other for supremacy,
with the same savagery we do,
but with less discrimination as to who they combat with.
I noticed that countless animals disguise themselves.
Frogs as rocks of exotic hues. Foxes as bushes seemingly on fire.
Bugs as flowers not yet in bloom.
I think I’ll hide myself as a whale
with a harpoon in his side.
I watch male birds of paradise attempt to sing, yell, peck and dance
themselves into a lady bird’s heart;
their Pavarotti, their Don Juanian exploits, their best Baryshnikov
yield them no love, yet my undying admiration is theirs.
I long to be a part of a flock of birds or school of fish,
who seem seamlessly connected by one mind(interwoven by the urge to move)
I see the flower and the fungi bloom, the latter off the former,
in stop-motion photography
I wish to see myself grow in stop-motion.
I swam next to two whales;
a large one whose eyes said to the smaller one,
“I’ll starve for you.”
a small one whose eyes said,
“I will lose my mother when the water is warm.”
I walked with caribou, transient as I am.
Just searching for a place to call home,
both of us knowing that the only stable thing in
life is continuous change.
Part III. Rivers Do Run Dry (See Grand Canyon)
Years later it would be discovered that “HD TV” did not in fact stand for High Definition Television, but rather Hoaxed Depiction Television. Indeed nothing we saw in “HD” was in actually real; rather it was highly doctored images created by the media powers that be. This would explain seemingly implausible animals, landscapes and natural phenomenon seen in the BBC series Planet Earth. Cryptic statements made by the narrator of the documentary (who turned out to not actually be British or a man) such as, “This is the first and last time this spectacle has ever been documented on film.” Ironically, these claims by the narrator are the only truths the entire project has to offer. The images never will be seen again in nature due to the fact that they were fabricated in a Hollywood warehouse.