Dam Builders

Just upstream from Sugar Island Dam
down the bank behind my house, lives
the exception that proves the rule--
lazy beavers. It all started back with FDR:
Niagra Mohawk and REA and CCC trying
to bust the depression with tree-farming
and low-head hydro. Pointless industry.

Not everybody gets the knack for laziness.
You may have to convert to it, from the depths,
like born again. When those beavers saw
the big machines come in, snorting and roaring,
and the hillsides come down, crunched like punk,
and the quick little men running around
all night under lights, it rocked them back.

Why do we even bother? They swam up
and down that new dam and couldn't find a chink
to patch, nor a seam to plaster, not even
a rough spot to sort of nifty up, demoralizing.
And the water just kept rising, up, up,
until there wasn't a spot of marsh left,
and all their lives' labor was sunk for the bass.

Then some flat-tailed Elijah caught the Visions.
The water stopped rising in time for new lodges
and a winter's supply of greens. "Brothers!"
I hear him say, "Brothers, I have seen the Mother
of Beavers, she who split the world three ways:
water, land and sky--whose dugs produce the rain.
She told me to tell you she loves us, yes it's true.

"And if the Great Mother loves us, would she not
have us prosper; would she not free us from labor?
Would she not raise up the sheltering water
to meet the succulent boughs, giving us
a winter of plenty, rich milk for our pups?
And would she not set evil man, the dam-blaster
forest-burner and pup-trapper to toil in our stead?

"Sleep in peace. The dam is of Her manufacture
and will not fail." Well, amen. So, next season,
they kept their new lodges under the new bank
and haven't bothered with dam building since.
They still work some, mind, and keep their watch.
You'll see them near sunset 'round the reservoir
logging softwood just shy of stove-width.

Still, they seem a little lackadaisical.
They paddle and turn, dip and dive, making
it all look as easy as floating a rubber raft.
And now, fifty years later, the dam builders
are back. The spillways spout leaks; the concrete
molders and dangles stalactites. The big machines groan
while the beavers putter about. Let George do it.

© Dale R. Hobson. All rights reserved.

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