NVN Thursday: Falling Icons (2 Poems)

"Eagle Elegy" by Susan J. Wurtzburg and "Admonitory Ode to Mount Rainier" by Joel Savishinsky

EAGLE ELEGY

by Susan J. Wurtzburg

Once an endangered species, bald eagles, including at Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota, came roaring back to life. They now confront a new foe: avian flu. —The Washington Post, October 5, 2024

*

Iconic American bald eagle, feathered vigilance,
predatory golden gaze far-focused 
across the valley, where coyotes jump-kill 
mice and voles. Fur-encased small prey,
meaty morsels for white-headed sea eagles.
 
Yellow hooked beaks prominent on the Great Seal,
where bald eagles unfurl their wings, a defiant
symbol of the USA. Environmental laws nurtured
these raptors, saved from harms: DDT, hunters,
lead bullets. Biologists lauded their soaring story.
 
Exaltation for these wide-winged fliers slumps 
with the advent of avian influenza. 2021: year
that birds begin to fall from the sky, falling, falling,
across the USA. Now, 2024: talons clench, beaks twist,
wings flail: collapse of iconic bald eagles widespread.
 
Emblematic birds, do you auger an apocalypse?

*

Susan J. Wurtzburg received 1st place in the Land of Enchantment Award, 2024, the Save Our Earth Award, 2024, and the Elizabeth M. Campbell Poetry Award, 2022, and was a semi-finalist in the Crab Creek Review Poetry Competition 2022, and in the Naugatuck River Review's 14th Narrative Poetry Contest, 2022. She was a Community Poet in the Spring 2023 Poetry Workshop, Westminster College, Salt Lake City. Wurtzburg is a Commissioned Artist in Sidewalk Poetry: Senses of Salt Lake City, 2024. Her poetry book, Ravenous Words, with Lisa Lucas will appear in spring, 2025.

*

ADMONITORY ODE TO MOUNT RANIER

by Joel Savishinsky

The top of Mount Rainier is no longer the top of Mount Rainier. The frozen ice cap on top of Washington’s iconic mountain—recognized for generations as the tippy top—is melting as the atmosphere warms. Now, that frozen dome has sunk below a rocky patch on the mountain’s southwest rim, crowning that spot as the new highest point. —Seattle Times, October 6, 2024. Photo: Eric Gilbertson poses Sept. 21 on Mount Rainier’s southwest rim, the new highest point of the mountain, with the Columbia Crest, the mountain’s former highest point, in the background. (Courtesy of Ross Wallette)

*

Perhaps it is too much 
to expect any of us to
stand tall in these times,
to measure up to what
we once were at 
the peak of our reputations.
 
Maybe this is what happens
when you’ve stood for ages
with your head in the clouds,
unaware of how each year
grinds you down a bit,
too busy looking down on
everyone else to notice
that people don’t 
look up at you quite 
in the way they used to.
 
Yes, your admirers will still
grapple with your magnitude,
admire your posture and
profile, but as the decades 
wear on and wear you down, 
like the rest of us you will
probably need to learn
to get over yourself.
 
If not, you’ll only get more
upset, lose your cool,
blow your top, and
shrink even more
in our estimation.

*

Joel Savishinsky moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2014 at the age of 70. In the years since then, he has lost at least 1 ¼ inches of height. He is a retired professor of anthropology and gerontology, a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and author of Breaking the Watch: The Meanings of Retirement in America, winner of the Gerontological Society of America’s book-of-the-year prize. In 2023, The Poetry Box published his collection Our Aching Bones, Our Breaking Hearts: Poems on Aging. His work has also appeared in Beyond Words, Blink-Ink, The Decolonial Passage, The New York Times, The New Verse News, Passager, and Willawaw.