Sandy Wiener (3/8/16)

(3/8/16) Sandy Wiener writes in: “Toward the end of February, Sarah and I (and daughters Nell and Eliza) were with Erik Esselstyn and his wife Celina Moore for dinner at their wonderfully restored old tavern house in Plainfield, northern Vermont. Lots of music, including Schubert lieder and indie folk. Erik also read a poem he had written, the verses coming together, he said, as part of a fundraiser for 350.org. Here it is.”

THE ANCIENT HIMALAYAN WATER SPIDER

. . . .Listen.

. . . .Listen.

. . . .I am the great Himalayan water spider. For millennia I have crouched atop the thousands of square miles of glaciers in the world’s highest mountains. I feed on layers and layers of miles thick ice. The ice is thinning. My eight legs are wilting.

. . . .I am dying.

. . . .One leg forms the Indus River that winds through Pakistan and empties into the Arabian Sea . Another leg, the Amu Darya , flows through the poppy fields and gardens of Afghanistan. The withering Aral Sea depends on another leg, the Syr Darya.

. . . .The Yellow and the Yangtze wend through China and today may not reach the sea. Ah, my beloved Brahmaputra that skirts the ice fields on the north and winds its way through Bangladesh, slaking the thirst of millions. And my robust Ganges, the endless fount of life for India’s farmers, that sweeps the ashes of the dead to the ocean. Remember, too, the sweet Mekong, thousands of miles of glistening fish and endless rice paddies.

. . . .We are dying.

. . . .My Andean cousins that freshen a thousand western streams and water the fountains of La Paz and Lima are disappearing. As well my Alpine sisters who provide such wondrous skiing and feed Lakes Geneva and Como.

. . . .We are dying.

. . . .Listen.

. . . .Listen.

. . . .Erik Esselstyn
. . . .April 2007