Poetry Friday: Requiem for Nokomis

Great Blue Heron, eBird.com

In November 2018, I learned about a Great Blue Heron who had been tagged in Maine and fitted with a transmitter. To the scientists' surprise, they found out that this bird, whom they named Nokomis after Hiawatha's grandmother, called in Longfellow's poem "daughter of the wind, Nokomis," spent her winters in Haiti. The first time it happened, they thought she had landed there accidentally, but it turned out that was her regular spot, where she went every year. 

Last week I heard from Danielle D'Auria, a wildlife biologist who works for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (you can see some of her writings on birds here). She told me that Nokomis' transmitter was no longer sending information. People on the ground here are working on finding out what happened to Nokomis. It appears likely that she has died, but perhaps she just got separated from her transmitter. Danielle wrote a wonderful piece about Nokomis here.

 

In Danielle's article, she mentions a teacher in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, who wrote a poem about Nokomis. That teacher was me, and you can read the poem I wrote here. Nokomis wasn't just an interesting story to me; she became one of the major catalysts that brought me to birding. Danielle sent me some questions about birds in Haiti back in 2019, and in the course of doing research to answer them, I met many people who are involved with birds here. Most of them I still haven't met in person, but some I have, and I have had the great joy of learning much more about birds both through talking and writing to some of these people, and through using my own binoculars to study the species in my yard and in other spots in Haiti. I wonder how I would have made it through the difficult times of the last two years without birding; we spent weeks and weeks at home for political reasons and due to COVID-19, and birds were a bright spot during all of it. I have written many posts on this blog about my birding adventures. 

 

Even though we don't know all the details about what happened to Nokomis, I wanted to write a post honoring her. If more information comes out, I may write another one then. I am going to share a poem I wrote for her and two other heron poems I found. 

 

I should warn you that once you start to write in the meter Longfellow used for his Hiawatha poem, trochaic tetrameter, it's hard to stop. You may find yourself talking this way: "Could you kindly pass the lettuce, salad green delight, the lettuce? For I find I long to eat it, long to crunch its summer goodness." I used trochaic tetrameter for the first poem I wrote about Nokomis, and I did for this one, too. (You can find Longfellow's poem in the post with my first Nokomis poem, here.)

Requiem for Nokomis

by Ruth Hersey

 

Now we say farewell, Nokomis.

We don't know what happened to you,

Dear Nokomis, Great Blue Heron,

But we know you loved to travel,

Left your home in Maine behind you,

Took off for the island nations,

Landed every year in Haiti.

In the years that science tracked you,

You flew thirty thousand miles,

Back and forth, first south, then northwards,

From cool Maine to tropic island.

Last time you sent information

It was on a day remembered,

Day of sorrow and destruction,

Day when Haitians grieve the earthquake.

Did you die that day, Nokomis?

Did you leave behind your body,

Or just misplace your transmitter?

Do you forage still the rice fields?

Are you headed north for summer?

Are you squawking, squawking somewhere,

Catching frogs and fish and insects?

How we hope so, dear Nokomis,

How we hope your life continues,

And we thank you, too, Nokomis,

Thank you for all that you taught us,

Bird of mystery and of science,

Bird of poetry and data,

Bird we grew to love, Nokomis.

I found two other poems about Great Blue Herons that I wanted to share, also, because both of them capture how breathtaking these birds are. I always feel honored to watch birds and to be able to see their behavior and habits, but the fact is that I am much more of an arts person than a science one. I would rather appreciate their loveliness than band them. I'd rather write a poem about one than learn a physics formula about how it flies. Birding has room for both science and poetry.

Heron Flight

by Siddie Joe Johnson

There has been shadow,

Now the substance lies

Slow above water,

Paralleling skies.

 

...

 

There has been motion

Stilling to rest,

As water takes heron

Back to its breast.

You can read the middle two stanzas here at Poetry Foundation. I love that last stanza. It's about the bird landing, but it could also be about the "stilling to rest" of the end of a bird's life.  

Hayden Carruth's poem, with which I'll end my tribute to Nokomis, perfectly captures the way I feel when I'm birding. I always want to share what I see, to tell others breathlessly about the beauty I was privileged to experience. Usually I'm by myself, and by the time I call others to see (if indeed they are awake at all), the bird has gone. My bird photography is so far a giant failure. Instead, I use words, even though, as Carruth says, the experience "was wordless."

The Heron

by Hayden Carruth

Let me tell you, my dear, about the heron I saw

by the edge of Dave Haflett's lovely little pond.

A great blue heron, standing perfectly still, where it had been

studying Dave's rainbows and brookies beneath the surface.

And I too stood perfectly still - as perfectly as I could - 

not twenty feet away, each of us contemplative and quiet.

Communication occurred. I felt it. Not just simple

wonder and apprehension, but curiosity and concern.

It was evident. The great bird in its heraldic presence,

so beautifully marked, so poised against the dark green water.

I in my raggedness, with my cigarette smoldering, my eyes

squinting, my cap tilted back. Two invisibly beating hearts.

Then the impetus lapsed. The heron nodded and flew away.

I turned back into Dave's workshop and picked up a wrench. 

If goodness exists in the world - and it does - then this moment

was the paradigm of it, a recognition, a life in conjunction with a life.

But why am I compelled to tell you about it? It was wordless. 

And why, over and over again, must I write this poem?

This poem appeared in Poetry Magazine in March 1997 and can be found here at the Poetry Foundation website.

 

Next week is the beginning of National Poetry Month. I am planning to post daily in April, using the theme of Spring Cleaning. Basically, I'll be writing about the poetic tabs I have open on my desktop, writing about them so that I can close them and reduce my digital clutter. I've chosen an image of a Haitian broom to put on these NPM posts. I'll also be participating in the Progressive Poem. (Incidentally, we still need some more people to sign up for a line, which you can do here.)

 

 

Today's roundup is here, at Soul Blossom Living.