Poem: "Urban Removal"

This is the second freebie from the January 7, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl.  You have new prompter and donor ideealisme to thank for this perk.  The poem was prompted by my_partner_doug.

It began as an attempt
to prevent abandoned buildings
from becoming a hazard --

a policy that any residential property
left vacant for six months
must be condemned and demolished,
regardless of condition or circumstances --

with the idea of promoting
a wave of urban renewal.

Instead the practice
led to urban removal.

As the once-great city
began to shrink,
people moved out and
nobody could be found
to inhabit the spaces left.

House after house was torn down,
whole neighborhoods ravaged.

Vacant lots sprouted with weeds
and grasses, then brush, and finally
trees as infant forests rose
according to the laws of succession.

Despite the rule,
there were still empty buildings
here and there in Detroit,
their peeling paint and broken windows
a sad testament to entropy.

As civic planning goes,
the policy was an unmitigated disaster;
but in terms of the environment
it posed surprising benefits.

The vacant lots became habitat
that attracted all kinds of wildlife:
skunks and raccoons,
porcupines and deer,
even pheasants and peregrine falcons.

Along the Detroit River there were
bald eagles and ospreys,
lake sturgeon, lake whitefish, and walleye.

The real surprise was the beavers,
industrious creatures but fussy
about water quality and forage.
They hadn't been seen in the river
for over seventy-five years,
yet autumn they just showed up for work
as if they had never left.

As humans wrote themselves out of the picture,
nature quietly filled in the gaps
with her delicate watercolor sketches.

* * *

Notes:

Detroit has been circling the drain for decades, alas.

Ecological succession is the process by which weeds and grasses make way for brush and trees when colonizing bare ground.

Wildlife is returning to the Detroit area including pheasants, raptors, and beavers.  Important species give information about what's happening.  Indicator species tell things about their environment.  Keystone species have a big impact on their habitat even in small numbers.  Beavers are indicator and keystone animals.  Apex species such as ospreys occupy the top of the food chain in their habitat, requiring large stable populations of other species below them.