The Crop
For Terry Greenwood
Our crop.
The words, we raise the words.
We raise the words of warning:
Poison.
Liquid death.
This is not a figure of speech.
“All those calves? Stillborn at one time? That doesn’t happen.”
The crop. The crop of words. The warning.
Still at birth. A killing.
Injected.
Death into the earth.
It will raise. The death: it will raise.
Cancer.
Eater of brains.
The growing that will not cease.
Growing:
Economies are said to be diseased when they do not grow.
So we grow.
We grow endlessly.
As cancer.
We are the cancer: Homo sapiens. Earth’s Cancer.
Terry would say, at meetings, “We’re all going to die.”
He stopped short of saying: “We’re all going to kill.”
Earth’s Cancer: Do we turn this?
Do we decide, this day, each in whatever way, we turn this?
Pittsburgh, two thousand ten, the People’s Oil and Gas Summit,
Jeanne Shenandoah, Onondaga Nation teacher:
“When we first heard about fracking, we didn’t have to think about it.
We just knew it was wrong.”
Earth. The mother. The teacher.
Terry. Worker of the earth.
It is the burden.
Terry’s burden.
You can let it down now, Terry.
Gentle Terry. The most gentle man in the room. But strong.
Let it down, Terry.
We will take it.
The farmer. Raising.
Earth, The Mother, Pachamama.
Terry, the farmer.
Be raised, Terry.
The crop.
The warning.
For us to raise now.
We are all the farmer.
We raise.
We raise the turning.
We turn death.
We turn each other.
We turn the sky: energy from the sky.
Soaring.
Terry.
Turned.
Jim Rosenberg
Grindstone, PA
6/10/2014