By Scott T. Starbuck
Imagine being the last survivor
of the United States of America,
your people bounty-hunted
by invaders from across the sea
at 25 cents a scalp
and five dollars a head,
you, hiding in a barn, hungry,
thinking of your murdered father,
mother and sister’s winter supplies
taken as souvenirs by land surveyors
yet you never give up on God
or ancestral dreams,
but later, reflecting on your role
as a pneumonic museum piece
in what the Yelamu called Chutchui
before it was Berkeley, CA,
recall years before Kroeber
took you in to study,
how, as a boy
among wild poppies,
crimson was a beautiful color.
Inspired by the film
Ishi, the Last Yahi available at
jedriffefilms.com
Copyright Starbuck 2012
Scott T. Starbuck ’s Hawk on Wire: Ecopoems was selected from over 1,500 entries as a Montaigne Medal Finalist at Eric Hoffer Awards for “the most thought-provoking books.” Written at a PLAYA climate change residency, it was a July 2017 “Editor’s Pick” at Newpages.com along with The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, and featured at Yale Climate Connections. There is a 24-minute YouTube of his book launch sponsored by La Jolla Historical Society’s WEATHER ON STEROIDS EXHIBIT. In addition to being a poet, Starbuck participated in, and presented at, the UCSD Climate Curriculum Workshop, gathering ideas for his science-based poems. His climate ecoblog is Trees, Fish, and Dreams and “Manifesto from Poet on a Dying Planet” is at Split Rock Review. Starbuck’s new book Carbonfish Blues (Fomite, 2018) will be a collaboration with English artist Guy Denning who will provide drawings, murals, and paintings of activism, refugees, human vulnerability, and realism.
All work by Scott T. Starbuck
