An unwelcome gift
A while back a friend gave me what another friend, Tina, subsequently described as an unwelcome gift – an invitation to a meeting about something called fracking.
Fracking is a way of extracting gas from the earth using methods which have some very detrimental effects on the environment and on the local area, including health impacts, earthquakes and (if you are Daily Mail or Express reader) even worse – falling house prices.
In spite of this our government seems set on pushing it onto communities without proper regulation, and the frackers are brandishing wads of cash to persuade people to let them in. Many people in my local area seem quite happy to sleepwalk into disaster.
Recently a local writer where I live in Lytham decided to create an anthology of local voices called “Lytham Lives” – this poem was my submission to it.
What Lies Beneath
The always-been, the ever-long,
lies patiently beneath the crowd,
that moving, milling, grinding throng
like fruit flies, seething, buzzing, loud.
The shouldn’t be, the chancing boys,
come charmingly with carpet bags,
make honeyed, monied, unctuous noise,
sell lies of wealth and jobs and Jags.
The mustn’t be, the tearing screws
thrust hard into the rigid earth
and pump their rotten putrid juice
to force a mewling spewling birth.
The always been, the earth’s dark core
stirs, then shakes, and with a crash
tears back the scab from off the sore,
spits back the bile, the toxic trash.
The “cannot bes”, “will never bes”
hit hard on unsuspecting folk.
The accidents and maladies
were never things of which they spoke.
But if the could have been had been,
If men had listened, thought and done,
Then none of this would now be seen
and Fyldes’ green fields would lie in sun.
Copyright © John Hobson 2014 – All rights reserved.
