No! No! No!
Pipeline Protest
Its name is Nexus,
from the Latin
meaning to bind, fasten, tie.
The pipeline, nearly as wide
as a kindergartener is tall,
will cut through
dairy farms and backyards,
hurtling high-pressure
danger for profit. Always profit.
Maybe it’s another wake-up call,
like the one Bush offered
by invading a sovereign nation;
brutalizing the Iraqi people
we claimed to be saving.
Brutalizing ourselves.
Of course we keep hitting
the snooze button.
Waking up isn’t easy.
Birds flounder
in oily waters
and we’re desperate
to sleep a little longer.
Today you and I stand
amidst hand-lettered signs:
Windmills Not Oil Spills,
Eminent Domain=Greed,
Fuck Fracking.
Cold wind brings tears to our eyes.
Fear brings us here. Anger too.
And bone-deep grief
for this lovely lovely planet.
Awakening shows us a million ways
to climb past despair.
I want us to do it for love.
Laura Grace Weldon
Originally published in the Blue Collar Review. Find more poetry in my collection, Tending.
- Here’s more about the Nexus pipeline including the route and blast radius in Ohio.
- Here’s an article I wrote about how fracking might affect my family, and yours. (First published on Wired.com.)
- Here’s a glimpse at just how shady the oil and gas industry can be. More than 100 letters sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Agency (FERC) in support of the pipeline are fakes, using names and addresses of Medina County residents who did not write them or sign them. A FERC project manager said the falsified letters would remain on the docket.
- Here’s recent disheartening news. An appeals court, using a 65 year old Ohio law meant to facilitate the construction of utility infrastructure after World War II, has ruled against the rights of property owners. This means pipeline surveyors are free to intrude on the yards and farms of 65 landowners who have actively objected. Yesterday armed security guards stood by as surveyors took measurements on a horse farm just south of the fairgrounds, a farm that’s bordered on three sides by wetlands and park property. As resident Paul Gierosky said in a recent article, “NEXUS is no more a utility than I’m an astronaut. This pipeline is not a public agency designed to service the people along its route. It’s a for-profit company that’s going to sell the gas to a foreign country.”
Image: Garry Knight, CC by 2.0
Laura Grace Weldon 
And so it goes, everywhere. Here, they want to convert the most fertile soil in this country, the soil that feeds us, into a giant CSG field. For profit, of course. The farmers would receive derisory compensation for the paper value of their land, ignoring the generations of heritage, the uprooting of communities and the bullying tactics of the lobbyists pressing for this farce. I’d rather we retained the ability to feed ourselves than raided our country to sell its resources to other nations, quite aside from the ecological implications and the steamroller tactics of rapacious business.
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I had to Google CSG. There were many options including Counterterrorism Security Group, Council of State Governments, and Certified Specialist in Gerontology. But I suspect you’re referring to Coal Seam Gas which, from the little I know, seems environmentally devastating and, as you say, destructive to farms and communities and a nation’s self-sufficiency. The extinction promoting approach to capitalism has got to end.
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Sorry, I should have thought. It’s an ever-present issue here… we have huge coalfields here and plenty of the stuff to be harvested.
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It actually gave me a moment of levity to imagine the most fertile soil in the country being converted into Certified Specialists in Gerontology.
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Looks like you have quite the fight on your hands Laura
Good luck from the climate change action movement in Australia. Remember that there are people fighting similar fights all over the world, you aren’t alone! Keep us posted!
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Thanks Nicole. I drifted over to your site and was instantly entranced by the tiny house you and your partner are building. You’re doing your part to walk lightly.
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A powerful poem Laura. Thank you.
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Thanks Martina.
I am utterly delighted to have found your site and am swept away by your article “Learning By Doing: Lessons from my Inuit Teachers” in Life Learning Magazine. I’ll be sharing that next week on the Free Range Learning fb page, and the week after I’ll share the Irish Examiner piece about your family’s sailing/natural learning lives.
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Thanks so much Laura! Glad to hear you’ve found my site. And thanks so much for sharing some of the pieces I’ve written. Hopefully more blog posts in the next few months on the theme of learning. Lots of ideas taking shape at the moment!
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