"Trophic Cascade," by Camille T. Dungy

After the reintroduction of gray wolves
to Yellowstone and, as anticipated, their culling
of deer, trees grew beyond the deer stunt
of the mid century. In their up reach
songbirds nested, who scattered
seed for underbrush, and in that cover
warrened snowshoe hare. Weasel and water shrew
returned, also vole, and came soon hawk
and falcon, bald eagle, kestrel, and with them
hawk shadow, falcon shadow. Eagle shade
and kestrel shade haunted newly-berried
runnels where deer no longer rummaged, cautious
as they were, now, of being surprised by wolves. Berries
brought bear, while undergrowth and willows, growing
now right down to the river, brought beavers,
who dam. Muskrats came to the dams, and tadpoles.
Came, too, the night song of the fathers
of tadpoles. With water striders, the dark
gray American dipper bobbed in fresh pools
of the river, and fish stayed, and the bear, who
fished, also culled deer fawns and to their kill scraps
came vulture and coyote, long gone in the region
until now, and their scat scattered seed, and more
trees, brush, and berries grew up along the river
that had run straight and so flooded but thus dammed,
compelled to meander, is less prone to overrun. Don’t
you tell me this is not the same as my story. All this
life born from one hungry animal, this whole,
new landscape, the course of the river changed,
I know this. I reintroduced myself to myself, this time
a mother. After which, nothing was ever the same.

+ Camille T. Dungy

Camille T. Dungy is an award-winning American poet and essayist who lives and teaches in Colorado. She edited the anthology, Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, which won a Northern California Book Award.

A “trophic cascade” is an ecological phenomenon set in motion by the addition or removal of top predators in a particular place, creating reciprocal changes in populations of predator and prey through a food web, often resulting in dramatic changes in ecosystem structure and nutrient cycling.

In other words, all creation is a web of relationships, a weave so intricately woven that reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone has actually changed the region’s rivers for the better — and Dungy’s masterful poem shows us how, not least by right-justifying the poem’s layout, drawing our eye to the cascade of words down the middle of the page. And at the same time, “Trophic Cascade” is also a poem about motherhood: how our lives, too, are made of relational webs, and how the arrival of “one hungry animal” changes everything.