Polar Bear

O polar bear, how you have fallen! On a barren shore, all slush and mud, you bellow your rage at an empty sea.

Your ancestors were sleek white Hunters, their ears could trace a seal's heartbeat through the ice.

Your ancestors, o polar bear!

Their angry bones peek from melting drifts; they frown at your ragged fur.

Like a bathroom mat too tattered to wash, we'll toss you out with the old newspapers, o Once-Great Hunter!

The seals rejoice at your demise, for they are in the San Diego Zoo.

Who will clean your yellowed fur? Your pristine coat has ring around the collar; it's clear you've been scrounging in the dump again.

Don't you know the science is dodgy? Do you even know what dodgy means?

Your world melts slowly like a bar of Ivory soap; your pups are born hermaphrodite.

You'll have to be sharper than that if you want to make it in this Economy.

You lanky hungered dog, I see your ribcage!

Have you no shame? To show yourself in Public like that?

The Discovery cameras are rolling! Hide behind that outhouse, Bear!

"Drill, baby, drill!" the shiny faces cry as you begin to eat your kind.

"The science is dodgy," they say. "The science is dodgy." What's to be done?

Don't turn cannibal yet, o Hunter, for I have a Plan.

We gather up those who say it's so; we gather their Ringleaders first.

We give them placards to their liking: "Global Warming = Liberal Hoax!" "Save the SUV!" "God Hates Tree-Huggers!"--real red-blooded American placards, not the kind those OWS commies wave.

We send them on a special "protest cruise" straight to your muddy shore. They'll take their complaints right to you, o Bear!

Rush and O'Reilly and Sarah and Glenn, with a clutch of their blubbery friends. We'll give them bullhorns and necklaces of sausage links.

Listen to them as long as you like. I think you'll know what to do.

Would you like Tony Hayward along? Cheney? Would you care for Champagne, compliments of Goldman Sachs, execs of which will soon be sent your way?

They have their gripes too, you know.

When you've had your fill of their arguments and whatever else, o Hunter--when, in short, there's some flesh on your scrawny limbs--then we will get down to Business for real.

Then we'll do something about your melting world.

2007 photo of a starving polar bear, by Heiko Wittenborn.