Like a one-thousand-foot middle finger,
The smokestack flouted its presence
Over the docile valley
Until a press of boney flesh
Compelled it to crumble in upon itself
Into a heap of rubble
Under a maelstrom of dust…
Then thunder thundered into stone oblivion,
And in the shivering silence
The awaiting earth whispered fuck you.
—
Robert E. Petras is a poet hailing from the small Ohio River town Toronto, Ohio in an area once documented as the most polluted in the United States. He is an active environmentalist, a certified naturalist and pollinator steward as well as a certified nutritionist and personal fitness trainer. His sci-fi novel, The Locust People, is modern-day adaptation of the classical theme man versus nature, the “man” in this case hydraulic fracturing.
