Dear River

Dear River,

Your journey

Fractured, wasted, and weary

Has become a necessary part of my own

If I return a year from now

your body reduced to bones

Will the land still be the land of my home?

And if I taught my son

to fight for what you believe in

and surely you will prevail

Shall I take him to your grave Site to C

To witness me crumble as I wail?

River,

Some may not understand

why your violation means so much

You are a resource to be harnessed

A couple dollar bills to clutch

“Cash Rules Everything Around Me”

The land boasts the wounds

of this radical philosophy

Another rig, another pipeline

It’s all Grease, Gas and Glory

Is this the tale I will tell my child

in lieu of his night time story?

That we believed in land, believed in home

But what we believed in

Was swallowed by a beast with a need untold

River

You are the marker, the spine, the belly and the breath

If you are gone

Should I even return

to a place that dares cut off your breast?

As if the first two lacerations

Did not wound you enough

Surely you will become toxic

Scornful at a greedy lovers touch

Forgive them,

for they know not what they do

Your bosom is a war zone now

and they feel they have much to prove

This land, my home

with burial sites of protruding rigs

Forgive them,

they do not know

it is our children’s graves they dig

In Spirit

Helen K