Shadows Twenty-Nine

Judy and Wag, curious. Photo by Doc Ellen, DVM.

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Shadows Twenty-Nine October 21, 2018

For Ellen and Emma on a Saturday at Jordan Lake

Three women, two older, one with a small dog 
and one with a camera on a gray day at the 
Jordan Lake dam. The young one photographs 
everything: the morning glories on the verges,
purple, blue, orange. Her favorite is the blue,
she says. Below us water foams and leaps out
of the dammed up lake. We speak of the eagles.
“I haven’t seen one,” the older woman in her lawn 
chair says.  Then, “Wait. Speaking of eagles,
there’s a young one. They look like red-tailed
hawks.” We look at that high-flying speck. We
speak of pollution, how this grand lake became
polluted a year after it was made. How the changing
climate can wipe out migrating flocks which
can’t feed off grain in the fields as they journey
south. “The eagles are okay. Their diet is fish.”
A week earlier, when they counted the eagles
they could see from the dam, they saw twenty-five
young and mature. If we can learn to preserve
the lake, the eagles, and the fish, we might manage
to preserve human life through its stages, young
to old. The young one says, “I want to go back
there.” The older women are glad. Keep up
the fight to treasure and protect our world alive.