This disturbs me...

(Image and more information found here)

Fracking.  Fracking The Marcellus Shale. Sandra Steingraber, a biologist, wrote about it last May in HuffPo.  

She also wrote a very powerful poem about the dangers of fracking.  The article, highly recommended as a prelude to the poem, gives an insight into what and where The Marcellus Shale is and what fracking is.  And what fracking will do to Life in that area so that humans can have a natural gas supply for 15 years.  

Rather than using our ingenuity to come up with other ways to supply our energy needs - and/or ways to reduce our dependence on those energy needs - the Beauty and Health of the land and our lives will be sacrificed.  To fill the coffers of big business.  

Sandra ends the article with these words:

If you like this poem, take it with you. Read it aloud at public hearings, at rallies, in church. Perform it at Earth Day celebrations. Consider this as permission to reprint. Send copies to your elected officials. Set it to music. Add some images and make a video. Whatever we can do to express our belief that the integrity of life on the sunlit surface of this planet depends on the integrity of the bedrock beneath us, we must do. Now.

The National Parks Conservation Association also wrote an article last year about the dangers of fracking - the link shown below the picture will take you to it.

The poem:

Marcellus

-- for Allen Ginsberg, who reminded us that the worship of Moloch required the sacrifice of children.

I.

Marcellus below us. Marcellus below us. 
Marcellus, tell us, who are you? 
Older than fishes. Older than spinal cord and bone 
and the green day of trees. Older than pollen dust, 
than seeds. Bedrock of grief. 
Subterranean coral reef. Microbe and nanowire. 
Electrically conductive, hypersaline fire. 
Alive.

II.

Marcellus our cellar. Marcellus unlike us. 
Fissured and fossilled sarcophagus 
of sea lilies and squid, ego and id.
The whole periodic table in you. 
Uranium. Radium. Barium. Lead. 
Marcellus, home of the dead. 
Toluene. Mercury. Benzene. Brine. 
Arsenic. The River Styx. 
Five hundred million years thick.

In you Euridice.

Hades. Moloch. Charon's boat.
Hades. Moloch. Ransom note.

III.

Marcellus deserved the name given him 
who waged war and gained fame for the sacking 
of Syracuse, for the battle of Gaul, only to lose 
to the enemy at home. And fall. No exit plan.
Some say your success was embellished, 
General Marcellus, tell us: who called you 
Sword of Rome?

Saudi Arabia below our feet. A prolific monster 
says Wall Street. A sure thing. A shale play. 
Play. Play. Place your bet.

Marcellus: a minor character who guides 
Hamlet away from his father's ghost. 
What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?
Something is rotten in the state of. . . .
Here, sign this lease and let's make the most 
of it.

Enters now Marc Antony breaking bread 
with Bobby Kennedy. Jealous?

Et tu, Marcellus.

O pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
that I am meek and gentle with these butchers.

IV.

Hades. Moloch. Charon's boat.
Hades. Moloch. Ransom note.

Marcellus, who are we? Drill. Syringe. 
Derrick. Vein. Two junkies argue how many
atoms of carbon dance on the head of a pin.

Marcellus, quick. Tell us. I hear the trucks. 
They're not far. The plan is reduce you to rubble.
There is no Hubble telescope for you. 
No 24-hour spill cam for us.

Are you a box inscribed with name Pandora? Or a 
scroll on which are written the names of us all?

V.

Holy the rock 
and the fissure, 
the salt and the diatom's fall. 
Holy the unfractured. 
Holy the wall 
between you 
and us, Marcellus. 
Holy the cave. 
Holy the soluble. 
Holy the hall. 
Holy the unmapped 
and abandoned 
well.

Hell.

I know you're down there.

Mom always said, 
don't blow up the basement.

Hades. Moloch. Charon's boat.
Hades. Moloch. Ransom note.

Let me love you 
from a long way up.
Holy the water. 
Holy the cup.