Dry Well
A Gift from Fort Apache Energy, Inc.
“We will be drilling with a fresh water mud system
which has no environmental impact.”
- Allan P. Bloxsom III, President
As woodland creatures shy until the dark
Drift as a silent blessing through the trees
At dusk some sad folk gather ‘round the wounds
Gored geometrically into the ground
A palisade of wood and water and earth
Now guarding nothing but pale desolation:
A pond of death whose hydrocarbon sheen
In corpselike stillness entertains no life
A sewerage ditch bedecked with human turds
A dumpster skip piled high with promises
Piles of unidentified white powder
An unattended garbage fire, a shirt
Some bolts, planks, screws, sandwich wraps, cigarette butts
A cargo cult of curiosities
Liturgically in statio around The Hole
That venerable new hole, that hole of hope
That fabled argosy laden with dreams
That fell into the depths, and never returned
At dawn a tower stood, adorned with lights
By dusk it was folded, and stolen away
Like the long-storied tents of Araby
Or a Roman camp in the Teutoburg
Abandoned among the darkening woods
For the curious primitives to poke
And prod about, chattering in their tongue
About the marvels of a superior race
Who make no environmental impact.