SCOTT T. STARBUCK

Bumper Sticker: Extinction is Forever

Symbolically, a drunk chases a moth with a swatter,

not knowing it has the head of his newborn son.

What I mean is Bach’s wife used his symphonies to wrap cod

and Melville’s wife said he was writing about a fish.

Neither wife understood the secret codes

or their future importance.

What I mean is all those years I studied,

read, spoke, taught, and watched,

innumerable plants and animals vanished

without you or me raising a finger.

What I mean is right now, as I write this,

that moth’s head is yours, and mine, and everyone’s.

A former fishing boat captain of the Starfisher in Depoe Bay, Oregon, Scott T. Starbuck has been a writer-in-residence at The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology on Cascade Head, an Artsmith Fellow on Orcas Island, and a Friends of William Stafford Scholar at the 2014 "Speak Truth to Power" Fellowship of Reconciliation Seabeck Conference near Hood Canal. His newest poetry chapbook is The Other History or unreported and underreported issues, scenes, and events of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries by Futurecycle Press, and his blog Trees, Fish, and Dreams.