InDUSTrial Distraction

I used to look at the scenery to the south from the back deck. It was fields of corn and soy beans and alfalfa with breaks of trees and a winding creek in between. Now all I see are the three towers topped with seemingly alien antennae and a multi story square of brownish tin. The color does not deceive. It is not the true color of earth or crops.

In the midst of farmland, they erected a plant to wash the soil. Well, not exactly soil. It is meant to wash the sand they dig so deeply to uncover. They drop sticks of dynamite into drilled holes and send tremors through the underground, enough to rattle walls and windows and set the floor rolling beneath my feet.

Trucks carrying this grainy gold abuse the highway with careless tarps flapping to the breeze of high speed travel. Dust particles disappear on the wind to find cracks in walls and windows until they burrow into lungs and labor breathing.

To the west, the barren spring field exposes the neighbor's home and chicken coops. Trucks with orange crates line the field and distract from the yellow play set constructed to protect pipes flowing with natural gas. I imagine children climbing it like a jungle gym, unaware of the danger buried three feet beneath them.

Farmers struggle. Neighbors fight. They take the ground out from under us and send it across state lines in trucks and trains in the name of oil and money. They promise jobs and prosperity. They claim to be good neighbors.

A misfire sounds like an elephant gun shot outside my bedroom window. The glass tinkles as if it's falling to pieces. Another charge dropped sixty feet makes the walls roll and cave inward. Will they bother to search for survivors when the walls give and the roof collapses? "It's all within regulations," they say. "We want to be good neighbors," they say.

They cut corners and contamination seeps into the earth. It could take two years to reach the aquifer. When it hits, we may never know. They don't make tests to uncover these cancerous chemicals.

"We want to be good neighbors," they say. They poison the air and water and pat citizens on the head as if reassuring children. "Here's a nickel or a lollipop," they say and offer meaningless tokens. A nickel won't filter our water. A lollipop won't clean the air.

These good neighbors are killing us a speck at a time. We die a bit each day with the promise of burial beneath what's left of the earth. Tell me. Who will buy their oil when we're gone?