The Master Primate

From the field note of anthropologist Mark Penner based on his study of orangutans in Kalimantan in Borneo in the 1980’s  since that time about a third of the rainforest there has been clear it.  The indigenous have been dislocated and the orangutan nears extinction 

 The Master Primate

The canopy thins as if

Stitched together

Like a Mennonite quilt

Sky connecting earth

Orangutans lose their homes

Tree by tree

Palms rise in straight obedient rows

Where wild fruit once grew 

The wilderness is lost to

Bewildering progress

Now endangered, not by hunger

But by profit

Some are taken

Small arms clinging

Eyes still learning 

the language of the leaves

Sold into markets

Where cages replace their branches

Silence replaces birdsong.

Their cathedrals of light and shadow

Now in jeopardy, they live alone

Masters of patience

Long reddish hair

The Bohemians of the jungle

Swinging with majesty

Like fire against the rain

And stars

Babies abandoned 

The poachers kill the mothers

Orphans learn again

How to climb how to trust trees

And life,

How to belong

With hands belonging to humans

Undoing what others have done

Released back to the forest

in future days

To begin a new life

Never quite like the first

A male calls out, the long call

Low and echoing

Claiming territory

Declaring I’m here

Seeking a mate

The sound reverberates

Through forest like a warning

A prayer

An invitation

Penetrating brown eyes

Intelligent, holds questions

A right to survive 

They were here before the roads

Before the plantations

Before fences and fires

The only true threat

To the real master primate

Is man

Who forgets too

He once lived in trees.