Covenant

May 30 2020

You can count on them emerging

as the leaves unfurl

in early spring.

When the air is black with them,

as if the line between life

and the inanimate world

had somehow been blurred,

a determined army of insects

materializing out of the ether

overnight.

When the sun warms.

When the birds return to feed their young.

When the world is reborn

in all its extravagant fecundity.

Blackflies are not individualists

libertarians

free thinkers.

They are automatons,

and overwhelm by numbers

no matter how many I kill.

So despite the heat

we dress in long sleeves

and tuck our pants into our socks.

We slip into gossamer nets

and look out through finely woven mesh

at a gauzy world

in shades of green.

Neighbours pass, nodding agreeably,

not quite sure who we are

in our standard garb

of dark camouflage netting,

a force of grim reapers

draped in shapeless shrouds.

Desperate animals

seek out wind, water, swamp

to escape the scourge.

While we patiently wait for August

and a golden fall.

Then winter's cleansing cold,

when the sun lowers

and buds have closed,

the birds eloped

to their muggy southern homes.

When the flies have long since died.

But their larvae survive

in shallow water

beneath the ice.

Because even in barren winters

life goes on,

out of sight

but everywhere.

A covenant of spring

like all the springs before,

when the world is resurrected

and returning birds have nested

and swarms of dreaded blackflies

fill the windless air.

This poem began with the observation by my neighbour that you can time the first appearance of the dreaded blackfly by the first unfurling of leaves. In the context of climate change, this is an important concept: the intricate interdependencies of complex ecosystems. An obvious one is how the birds time their migration north to coincide with the explosion of insect life. If they arrive too early, their hatchlings die; too late, they miss the peak and their offspring suffer. When the climate changes too quickly, species will adjust at different rates. Adaptation, as it selects for those outliers who were once anomalies but now fit the changed environment (so all you oddballs and misfits take heart!), may eventually bring this dynamic to a stable new equilibrium. But in the meantime, species are lost and biodiversity – which is the engine of nature's resiliency -- diminishes.

So nature works by this intricate clockwork. Every small changed cascades through the system, amplifying its effect and inevitably resulting in unexpected and unintended consequences in both time and space.

And nature works in cycles, as well: as the poem also depicts, the closed loop of seasonal change and succeeding generations.

Bottom line: the more uncomfortable the bugs are making us, the healthier the ecosystem. So the fact that our cities are largely bug-free not only says a lot about the toxic effect of our species on the world around us, but should make us question why we choose to live where we do.

I think this is a positive way to reframe the seasonal scourge of blackflies. To see them as essential to the flourishing of birds and the other animals that feed on either them, or feed on their remains. To see their precise emergence in spring as something beautiful: the clockwork of the natural world. And to appreciate their ability to over-winter as a testament to the persistence and resiliency of life: imagining the resurrection of spring as the small yearly miracle that it is. I think this sense of abundance and mystery is captured in lines like the air is black with them and extravagant fecundity and materializing out of the ether / overnight.

I quite like covenant over “promise” or “vow”. It has that Biblical gravitas (from the story of Noah's arc and the promise signified by the rainbow), so it fits nicely with the theme of something eternal – recurrent and perennial. And for readers who are believers, it will have added resonance: not the miracle of nature, but something divine – that is, literally miraculous.

I think the grim reaper analogy is telling. Not only does the “force” call back to the “army” of blackflies, but it alludes to the manichean bargain of life and death: that you can't have one without the other, just as you can't appreciate good without the existence of evil, or imagine a God without the counterweight of a devious devil and the pull of temptation. So for everything that lives, something else must die: either in terms of eat or be eaten, or in terms of making the way for the succeeding generation. And, as nature recycles and reuses, we are all returned to life anyway. Or at least our matter is, if not our consciousness.