The gathering of 35,000 walrus on a beach in northwest Alaska this week after they couldn’t find their preferred resting grounds of summer sea ice was a notable occurrence in terms of its sheer size, but it wasn’t an isolated event. –news reports

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When the floes beneath your flippers melt into the sea

And the icecap is receding out of reach

It forces you to contemplate your own mortality

And haul your blubber up onto the beach.

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In Nature, unlike Wall Street, you can’t be too big to fail.

Its laws are such no animal can hope to ever beat them.

Death stalks every creature and grabs it by the tail

Just ask the woolly mammoth, or the guys that used to eat them.

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Do you have a memory of how it was before

The climate changed and made your life a hell?

Do you dream of icebergs, while stranded on the shore?

And how exactly do you stand the smell?

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Is there a walrus heaven that you go to when you die?

Somewhere way beyond the Bering Strait?

Do you hope to haul out on that iceberg in the sky

Where endless schools of cod and herring wait?

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Oh, do not go gentle into that Arctic dusk

Six months from now will be another morning

Fight against extinction, tooth and nail and tusk

And hope your fellow mammals heed your warning.