I Denali

I Denali

I Denali, am majestic mountains, majestic valleys,
Glaciers of frozen fresh water, forest, and tundra,
Permafrost, and Life - grizzly bear, caribou, wolf,
Moose, Dalls sheep, vole, and tiny mouse.

I live now near polar North, my Earth’s work to
Radiate Sun’s heat to frigid outer space and
Balance out the sun flux that beats at our equator. I now
Keep our temperature for fertile growing.

My time is not your time, watch sweep-hand seconds,
A TV commercial second of thirty thousand dollars and more, to
Interrupt your flat screen staring entertainment and
Increase your purchases and consumption of …

My life is billions of earth sun circuit years.
I have drifted over the surface of our Earth
Colliding with and splitting apart from continents

My second is the hundred thousand earth sun circuit years of
Glaciation-warming cycles. I knew the wooly mammoth,
Giant beaver, giant sloth now gone extinct in my second of time.

My minute is the million year volcanisms; their greenhouse warming.
All ice melted then and oceans rose five hundred feet from
Glacial Earth to ice free Earth.

My day is tens of millions of sun circuits
A day ago my mountains were under sea
They rose and rise now an inch a sun circuit.

My year is billions of sun circuits
All ancestral life of earth born and dieing repeatedly
Buried in ocean sediments, earth graves covered by
Weathering of mountain, blown desert rock dust.

Your honorable Ancestors cleansed Earth’s sky of too much CO2
To give you breath of oxygen by their life and death and burial.

A year ago my Athabascan people named me Tallest One, Denali.
They lived with me in harmony.
A second ago, few hundreds of earth sun cycles, I saw your wooden sailing ships
Reach my continent to conquer it with your Ancestor burning culture.
You come to me in your domed rail cars and busses to look in awe at my majesty.
Your frenetic activity has warmed me, Denali, seven degrees and
You rip off mountain tops and push the rubble into valleys
To needlessly burn your Ancestors for energy to drive your frenetic entertainments.

I Denali mourn for my older brother Appalachians - despoiled.
We, my brothers and sisters of Greenland, Andes, Himalayas, Antarctica have Wolves You need to know.
My Wolves rest and feast in artic winter on snowshoe rabbit, vole and mouse, then
Cull migrating caribou herds of the weakest young and weakest old for health of herd and land.

Smoke and gasses of your burning your Ancestors have hungered my Wolves.

My glaciers melt, reflecting less, dark earth absorbing more from sun
My sea ice retreats, reflecting less, absorbing more from sun
My permafrost defrosts, three degrees of warming,
To release into our skies the stored greenhouse CO2 and methane.

My Wolves accelerate the warming to cull your frenetic herds.

Deserts expand in Americas, China, Australia, Africa …
Low islands and low coasts fled as oceans begin their rise.
Rivers run dry and aquifers pumped dry of fresh water
My wolves already maraud your hungry and migrating herds of frenetic refugees

Trees climb my tundra slopes, some lean drunken in my softened earth
Villages, of those who lived here with me in harmony from last ice age, are
Smashed by winter storm unprotected by the winter ice or tip in my softened earth.

I Denali tell you:

“You have the knowledge and technology for harmony with my majesty.”

Listen to the wisdom of those who lived here before your wooden sailboats came.
They lived in harmony with my majesty as you can in plenty for all.

"Do not wrong or hate your neighbor. For it is not he who you wrong, but yourself." Pima proverb.

"Respect for all life is the foundation." The Great Law of Peace.

"All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One." Black Elk

© David W Oliver 7/10/09