Why Are We Waiting?

I am so
Sick
Of people hurting other people
Of people hurting the planet that offers everyone shelter
Food
Water
I am so, so 
Sick
Of corporations pouring chemicals 
And poisons
Into the sweet-smelling earth
The soil that feeds their children
And other people's children
Pouring strange, unnatural things
Into the water that allows people to live
The water that shouldn't catch fire
If you hold a match next to it
I am so
Sick
Of a small group of people 
Who don't need the money
Forcing people to keep silent
To stop telling their stories
To be payed off by a bit of money
And no solution
I am tired
Of hearing  
That the water supply in a new place
Someone else's home
Has been contaminated
I am tired
Of hearing day after day 
That the oil companies
And the coal companies
Have given money
To campaigns
To individuals
To the government
Enough money to erase their fingerprints
From the headaches
The nose bleeds
The cancer
The death

There is enough natural gas in the United States to last its residents almost a hundred years
The sun will be around a lot longer than that
The sun will keep smiling at the earth
Reflecting off snow
Coaxing people to come breathe in the outdoors
Wind will not stop blowing 
After just a century
Sweet breezes will continue to ruffle hair and cool down summer days
Water
Beautiful, clean, glorius water
WIll not stop flowing
After only a century
So why are we waiting?

Money
Smear campaigns
Greed
Advertising
Non-disclosure agreements
Lobbying

I'm too tired and overwhelmed and sick
To cry

This planet
This earth
Is home to everything
People of every kind of color
Gender
Religion
Wealth
It is home to fields
And forests and flowers and air 
And beauty
And water
And trees 
It is home to polar bears and butterflies
Sea otters and panthers
Hermit crabs and pythons
Robins that chirp and sing as the sun filters through my curtains after a long sleep
Creatures that are great 
And small

When holes are drilled in the ground
To extract the oil that sits there right beneath our feet
When the chemicals leak through the cement coating and into the ground water
The streams and the rivers 
The lakes and the oceans
Humans aren't the only ones hurting
It's Rachel Carson's Silent Spring all over again
But from a different cause

Stop fracking now