tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2436878270535434755.post5571037228698839540..comments2023-08-25T08:39:14.082-06:00Comments on Wildlife Vet, Author, Storyteller: Lion Conservation SuccessesJerry Haighhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14276901551047524363noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2436878270535434755.post-73527850301009995742008-12-24T09:39:00.000-07:002008-12-24T09:39:00.000-07:00Hi Jerry,I recently received poem from an Aussie f...Hi Jerry,<BR/><BR/>I recently received poem from an Aussie friend of mine. Tony Tubbenauer is 90-something years old. We met in the 70's when he and his now deceased wife were guide divers on Heron Island, Australia. A former WWII fighter pilot who claims to have flown "just about every kind of aircraft the Allies ever had"(and lived), Tony has met and dived with them all - the Cousteau family, the Taylors, the Cropps. As an underwater naturalist and diver, his frame of reference for environmental issues is, of course, the ocean. Here is his poem:<BR/><BR/>The Turtle’s Tears<BR/><BR/>Children, come with me on this warm summer’s night, <BR/>Down to the sea, in the soft moonlight,<BR/>We’ll sit on the sand and quietly await,<BR/>The turtle’s coming; she may be late.<BR/> She’d traveled so long past reef and shark,<BR/>To find this beach and in the dark,<BR/>She struggled ashore with her gift of life,<BR/>To make her nest, despite all strife.<BR/>On this, her beach, where the moonlight glows,<BR/>Casuarinas sigh in the breeze that blows,<BR/>From the Coral Sea where it had it’s birth,<BR/>No sweeter wind blows on this Earth.<BR/>A hundred eggs she’ll lovingly lay,<BR/>Deep in the sand and until this day,<BR/>For fifty years she has roamed the sea,<BR/>What a mariner’s tale her life would be.<BR/>The things she’s seen in the ocean wide,<BR/>As she answered the call of the changing tide,<BR/>It’s been many years since she left this sand,<BR/>As a tiny thing you could hold in a hand.<BR/>She’s roamed the sea, the things she’s seen,<BR/>Would make for us a fantastic dream.<BR/>Mantas and whales, ferocious shark,<BR/>Corals and things that glow in the dark.<BR/>Creatures that we never have seen,<BR/>So many places we never have been.<BR/>Now she is here, after all those years,<BR/>And as she lays she sheds her tears,<BR/>If you ask the scientist man,<BR/>He’ll tell you she cries to remove the sand,<BR/>But if you are the caring kind,<BR/>Other things will come to mind.<BR/>In the long years since she left this shore,<BR/>And man has held a constant war,<BR/>With himself, the world and nature’s kind,<BR/>What is it he has in mind?<BR/>As carelessly he pollutes the Earth,<BR/>The air, the sea and for what it’s worth,<BR/>Spreads concrete jungles across the land,<BR/>Will he build upon this sand?<BR/>And so, as we see the turtle cry,<BR/>Her tears are running from each eye,<BR/>Surely she cries, not for the sand,<BR/>She grieves for the stupid greed of man.<BR/>She cries for a world that once had been,<BR/>Blue oceans and a land of green,<BR/>Trees and plants, bright flowers too,<BR/>Skies not grey but deepest blue.<BR/>People living in joy, not fears,<BR/>That’s what I see in the turtle’s tears. <BR/><BR/>- Tony Tubbenhauer <BR/>23.12.08.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com