How I Try to Save Polar Bears

I'm regularly assigned by a local magazine publisher to write of things I know nothing about. Thank God for Google and Wikipedia.

I know next to nothing about polar bears, except what I read in newspapers and National Geographic. They tell me it won’t be long before two-thirds of the world’s polar bears die off because of the shrinking Arctic ice. Within 40 years the bears will have lost nearly half of the range they need to live in.

Figures like that depress the crap out of me. One of my assignments was to uncover small things that helpless, depressed people like myself can do to reduce global warming. Here’s one factoid I found, although I don't remember its source: If every U.S. family replaced one regular light bulb with a fluorescent one, we’d eliminate 90 billion pounds of greenhouse gases, the same as taking 7.5 million cars off the road. We replaced three light bulbs. It may be pathetic, such baby steps. But better baby steps than no steps at all.

For this week's Poetry Jam, we are asked for poems that attempt to make a difference. I'd like to make a difference for the polar bears.

Song of the Arctic

The Arctic is screaming
a scientist said
The blanket of ice
on top of the earth
is fraying so fast
some summer soon
the walrus and wolf
the white bear and seal
will have no ice
to wander

They are not walkers on water.
They are not Christ.
They cannot redeem the world.
They cannot make ice.

We read this in the paper
sipping lattes on Sunday
take note for a moment
like a twinge in a tooth
It passes and we forget
we are a bowling ball
hurtling down the lane
at a bevy of pins
we soon will shatter
and they are living beings
screaming in the Arctic