A Day in the Life of a Sacrifice Zone

A poem inspired by a visit to Southwest Virginia

A Day in the Life of a Sacrifice Zone

Wake Up

Get out of bed. Know they are coming. Coming for your trees. Your soil. Your air. Your water. Your jobs. Your health. Your future. Your children’s future. Your grandchildren’s future. For life itself.

Eat breakfast

Take meds for the anxiety, the depression, the chronic pain. Hope the water in your coffee isn’t poison. Hope the air you breathe today won’t make you sick. Hope the food you eat isn’t giving you cancer.

Go to work

Check on office renovation. Get phone call that they’re putting nuclear reactors in your town. Get phone call they’re siting a landfill up the road. Get phone call that the creek is silting up again. Get phone call that they’re suing your volunteers. Check the mine site to see if they’re obeying the court order. Call the attorney because they’re not. Call a press conference about the nuclear reactors. Get phone call the governor is cutting a ribbon up the street. Get phone call about rumors of his secret presser.

Eat Lunch

You’re hungry because all those phone calls happened before lunch. Get phone call that they found out where the Governor’s presser is. Decide you can’t make it on short notice. Find volunteers to attend for you.

Go Back to Work

Write a press release about the reactors. Start a press release about the landfill. Call the regulatory agency to report on the stream pollution. Schedule public meeting about the landfill. Send out eblast about the public meeting. Get phone call with update on the reactor and the governor’s presser. Give out of town visitor a tour. Go back to office. Finish writing press release about the landfill. Finish filing paperwork with regulatory agency. Submit requisitions for contractors.

Go home and eat dinner

Hope the water and food and air in your house isn’t killing you. Hope you sleep tonight thinking about nukes and poisoned water and eroding land and missing mountains and mountains of trash. Take meds for the anxiety and depression. Take meds so you can sleep. Hope the meds you need to function in a sacrifice zone aren’t slowly killing you.

Sleep

Fall asleep thinking of colorful leaves and beautiful mountains and clear water with living fish and deer and birds and people. Because you know the fight is right. Because you know this place is beautiful. Because you know the people are worth it. Because you know that we don’t win if we don’t sleep.