A Death in the Natural World
by Belinda Greb
Title
A Death in the Natural World
Artist
Belinda Greb
Medium
Photograph - Photograph, Photography
Description
I debated about posting this, but it is a part of nature:
A Death in the Natural World
It's not something I looked for in the long grass of the dry lakebed
But it rose in the distance, an alien object in the fall landscape
A ribcage, barrel-shaped, empty, beckoning.
Skin and teeth and bones of a cow elk,
Flies and wasps buzzing round bits of gristle,
Legs splayed, twisting, as if trying, even in death, to escape its fate.
Across the field I had seen bear scat, but it could have been a cougar
That brought this once fine creature down.
In death, so little is left, matted grass round the carcass like a crop circle.
I visit it a week later and find the flies have gone.
The rib cage has been opened, legs rearranged
The remains have fed at least one coyote and countless scavenger birds.
Even in death, there is a purpose, at least in the natural world.
The elk's struggle to live is just as fierce as ours - but the submission to death?
A bear, cougar, coyote, vulture, flies, and wasps continue to live because this elk died.
Humans, we try to separate our selves from death, even after it occurs.
We arrange for chemicals, boxes, deep burial spots, iron vaults
We choose carved memorial markers instead of scattered bones.
Perhaps we wish to burn our remains as if hiding the evidence that
life as we know it is finite. In a month, the elk's remains too will be hidden from sight beneath the surface of a winter lake.
Its life, its death will be forgotten, just like yours or mine in time.
And that is natural, in a natural world. Life, death, repeats.
Life's continuity consumes individual moments and lives.
Material becomes immaterial.
I don't know why the bones fascinate me.
They have neither the grace nor spirit of the living animal.
They mark an absence of life yet suggest the eternal question, of what next?
The elk's skull seems to smile as if it knows the secret.
-Belinda Greb
Uploaded
October 13th, 2015
Statistics
Viewed 781 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 03/24/2024 at 10:13 AM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet
Comments
There are no comments for A Death in the Natural World. Click here to post the first comment.