DEATH OF A FRIEND

by Buff Whitman-Bradley

The death of the orangutan named Sampurna was confirmed Thursday by the West Kalimantan Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) in Borneo. 

Sampurna the orangutan has died

You may not have known him in life

But you will perhaps 

Know him in death

 

A male orangutan who was being monitored

By a wildlife rescue organization

He was at home in an Indonesian rainforest

When it caught fire

 

As the fire raged on and on

It filled with toxic smoke

Which Sampurna and all his neighbors

Could not help but breathe

 

After several days of poisonous inhalations

Sampunrna was found wheezing and choking

In a dry roadside ditch

Unable to stand

 

Rescue workers tried to help

They lifted him from the ditch

Gave him oxygen 

Told him he was going to get better

 

But he did not get better

The struggle for each labored breath

Grew more and more difficult until

Sampurna died

 

Of course his death was emblematic

Of the deadly effects of the climate catastrophe

That is wreaking havoc with life

On planet Earth

 

But his death was also the death

Of a singular being, 

A fellow creature, a unique self 

A brother to all of us, a friend

Buff Whitman-Bradley podcasts his poetry at thirdactpoems.podbean.com .

DARWIN AT WORK

by Howard Winn

When watching orangutans in nature documentaries, it is easy to imagine them as graceful rulers of the canopy; to whom climbing and brachiating through the trees is as natural and simple as breathing. This, however, would be an incorrect assumption. Just as toddlers learn to walk from following their parents, and through plenty of trial and error, young orangutans too must learn how to navigate the world around them. As the largest arboreal mammal in the world, orangutans face a steep learning curve when first grasping how to maneuver on their own in the forest. —Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation, August 1, 2018

If humanity does not change its ways
soon there will be no orangutans
we are told by the latest scientific
findings and the survey of these
strange beasts who seem like the
crazy cousins of homo sapiens
but in a world run by the rules of
business capitalism these sub-human
beasts have no union to protect their
status in a jungle with profit hidden
in the vines and the rain forests
just waiting for the latest entrepreneur
to make the proper business move
perhaps Chinese or Middle Eastern
to join the one percent who own
the semi-civilized world stash the
profits off-shore and buy expensive
real estate in London or New York
while the residual orangutans in
their diminishing jungle residences
find themselves as homeless as
the other immigrants of this time
with no where to go and no welcome
there or anywhere even if labor
is running short in the civilized nations.


Howard Winn's novel Acropolis is published by Propertius Press. He has poems in the Pennsylvania Literary Journal and in Evening Street Magazine.