Black History Month, Poetry Edition

Watershed
~Tracy K. Smith

200 cows         more than 600 hilly acres

            property would have been even larger
had  J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for
        waste from its Washington Works factory
where J was employed     
                                            did not want to sell
            but needed money   poor health       
mysterious ailments

Not long after the sale cattle began to act
deranged   
                      footage shot on a camcorder
grainy          intercut with static       
Images jump repeat      sound accelerates     
      slows down       
                    quality of a horror movie

the rippling shallow water       the white ash
      trees shedding their leaves
                                               a large pipe
discharging green water   
                                            a skinny red cow
hair missing      back humped
                                             
a dead black calf in snow         its eye
      a brilliant chemical blue 

                                            a calf’s bisected head     
      liver     heart    stomachs    kidneys         
              gall bladder      some dark      some green     
 
cows with stringy tails         malformed hooves         
      lesions      red receded eyes        suffering   slobbering     
                  staggering like drunks

It don’t look like
                             anything I’ve been into before
                                 

I began rising through the ceiling of each floor in the hospital as though I were being pulled by some force outside my own volition. I continued rising until I passed through the roof itself and found myself in the sky. I began to move much more quickly past the mountain range near the hospital and over the city. I was swept away by some unknown force, and started to move at an enormous speed. Just moving like a thunderbolt through a darkness.


R’s taking on the case I found to be inconceivable

It just felt like the right thing to do   
                                                                a great
opportunity to use my background for people who
                                 really needed it
   
                                 R: filed a federal suit
                                          pulled permits
                                              land deeds 
                                                      a letter that mentioned
a substance at the landfill   
                                               PFOA       
                           perfluorooctanoic acid

a soap-like agent used in
                                               Scotchgard TM
                                                                          Teflon TM

PFOA:                 was to be incinerated or
                              sent to chemical waste facilities   
                                    not to be flushed into water or sewers

DuPont:
                 pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds
                          into the Ohio River 
                 dumped tons of PFOA sludge
                          into open unlined pits

PFOA:
             increased the size of the liver in rats and rabbits       
                              (results replicated in dogs)
             caused birth defects in rats   
             caused cancerous testicular pancreatic and
                          liver tumors in lab animals   
             possible DNA damage from exposure
             bound to plasma proteins in blood   
             was found circulating through each organ     
             high concentrations in the blood of factory workers 
             children of pregnant employees had eye defects       
             dust vented from factory chimneys settled well-beyond
                          the property line
             entered the water table
             concentration in drinking water 3x international safety limit
             study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer
             worth $1 billion in annual profit

(It don’t look like anything I’ve been into before)   


Every individual thing glowed with life. Bands of energy were being dispersed from a huge universal heartbeat, faster than a raging river. I found I could move as fast as I could think.


DuPont:
               did not make this information public
               declined to disclose this finding     
               considered switching to new compound that appeared less toxic
                        and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time
               decided against it
               decided it needed to find a landfill for toxic sludge
               bought 66 acres from a low-level employee
                        at the Washington Works facility

(J needed money       
                                         had been in poor health   
a dead black calf           
                                         its eye chemical blue       
cows slobbering             
                                         staggering like drunks)


I could perceive the Earth, outer space, and humanity from a spacious and indescribable ‘God’s eye view.’ I saw a planet to my left covered with vegetation of many colors no signs of mankind or any familiar shorelines. The waters were living waters, the grass was living, the trees and the animals were more alive than on earth.

                                 
D’s first husband had been a chemist
                                                                     When you
worked at DuPont in this town you could have
everything you wanted
                                          DuPont paid for his education       
secured him a mortgage           paid a generous salary
even gave him a free supply of PFOA


He explained that the planet we call Earth really has a proper name, has its own energy, is a true living being, was very strong but has been weakened considerably.


                                                                   which she used
as soap in the family’s dishwasher     


I could feel Earth’s desperate situation. Her aura appeared to be very strange, made me wonder if it was radioactivity. It was bleak, faded in color, and its sound was heart wrenching.


                                                                Sometimes
her husband came home sick—fever, nausea, diarrhea,
vomiting—‘Teflon flu’

             an emergency hysterectomy
                                                                  a second surgery       


I could tell the Doctor everything he did upon my arrival down to the minute details of accompanying the nurse to the basement of the hospital to get the plasma for me; everything he did while also being instructed and shown around in Heaven.


Clients called R to say they had received diagnoses of cancer
         or that a family member had died

                  W who had cancer had died of a heart attack

            Two years later W’s wife died of cancer

They knew this stuff was harmful
            and they put it in the water anyway

 I suspect that Earth may be a place of education.

PFOA detected in:
                                American blood banks 
                                blood or vital organs of:
                                                                            Atlantic salmon                                                                                                     swordfish     
                                                                            striped mullet
                                                                            gray seals
                                                                            common cormorants
                                                                            Alaskan polar bears
                                                                            brown pelicans
                                                                            sea turtles
                                                                            sea eagles
                                                                            California sea lions   
                                                                            Laysan albatrosses on a wildlife refuge
                                                                                          in the middle of the North Pacific       Ocean       
 
Viewing the myriad human faces with an indescribable, intimate, and profound love. This love was all around me, it was everywhere, but at the same time it was also me.


                                        We see a situation

        that has gone

                                  from Washington Works

All that was important in life was the love we felt.