Welcome to my 600th post!! Of course, it must be a rant… where would I be without political commentary disguised as poetry?! Thank you, all my wonderful readers, for keeping me honest and challenging me on the more controversial topics, such as today’s… (drum roll, please, Riley)

Frickin’ Frackers

Relentless, those frackers are going for bear
Digging it deep to get what’s under there

Our potable water, environment, be damned!
Exhaust every option all over the land

Washington monument cracked at its top
Virginia’s first earthquake would not make them stop

Marcellus Shale bed on North P.A.’s border
extends to New York; Andy Cuomo’s no hoarder

He says, “Frack away and to hell with the facts*,”
although we all know methane leaks through the cracks

A Vietnam vet lives in Candor, near where
I grew up with sweet well water; clean, pristine air

This vet served his country and what does he get?
Tap water that lights up, burns like a gas jet

They’re siphoning water to sell back in bottles
I wonder which politic neck I should throttle:

The one who claimed fracking is “clean, natch’ral gas,”
Or our President Obama, for letting it pass

You cannot claim conscience and turn tail on truth:
No water, no farming; no milking. Our youth

inheriting worse that our parents gave us
We Facebook, petition; we Twitter and cuss

But no one will listen will Kochs are in charge
‘cuz they’re corporate energy – they’re livin’ large

© 2013 Amy Barlow Liberatore/Sharp Little Pencil

For ABC Wednesday, now on letter F; also for Trifecta, using their chosen definition of “exhaust” as a verb.

One of the lines below my email signature is, “Citizen For Potable Water and AGAINST Hydrofracturing.” This proved problematic for a time, when one of my nephews was working for a fracking company out West; it caused friction between me and a family member… but I didn’t really care about that. The big picture is not how much money a twenty-something is making (and it was the big bucks), it’s whether or not we will leave our grandkids and five generations past that ANY drinking water. At this rate, we’re losing ground.

* For more on the dangers of hydrofracturing for natural gas, see THIS LINK from Wilderness.org. Peace, Amy


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