Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Cleanup


Cleanup

Clorox bottle stuck in a tree
twenty feet above the waterline.
Come on in.  The water’s fine
as long as you don’t mind the shit and the pee
streaming from the straightpipes.
What keeps me up late nights,
though, is the knowledge that I drink this stuff.
Even with a filter,
this is out of kilter!
What’s even worse than that is the slough
from the mining runoff.
This is no one-off.
It pours into our water supply every day.
Heavy metals.
Regulator settles
for a pittance, considering the way
we have to swallow
what flows into our hollow.
Seems like it’s the case that the trash in the river
is the least of our worries.
EPA’s in no hurry.
They make their promise, but they rarely deliver.
Government’s been bought.
Don’t do what they ought
to.  And we all just accept that’s the way it is.
Well, maybe not all of us.
Some fools say, “Follow us
down to the river for a daytrip
cleanup.”  And other fools get arrested
trying to get the water tested.
And even other fools line up in front of the Whitehouse,
zipties on their hands,
calling out, “Clean up our land!”
You know, maybe those fools are a lighthouse,
revealing the danger,
trying to arrange our
response to mind-numbing irresponsibility.
Will it work?
Regardless, I can’t shirk
my duty to try with all my ability.
Pick up that trash.
Make a splash
in the halls of the powerful by pestering
them.  Call attention
to their pretension.
If we don’t do something, this will just keep on festering.

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