Mountaintop Removal Poem by Egbert Simcox

Boulders flee incising blasts,
Whining diesels gather for surgery.
Mastectomy in shale and granite
Shuffled chaos of ruble and silt,
Dusty sloughings of crust, sedge and saplings
Entomb creek creatures and willows below.
The fragile valley mortally deformed.
Shorn, the knob yields its black viscera
For steel mastodons to grind and gorge,
Unheeding showers wring silted
Sulphuric rivulets from the deflated hill
The darkening river waits below,
To rush the brew to innocent lips.

I watch with due remorse,
Allayed by my imperious need
To age with the ease that I am owed,
Safe from the sting or absence of a fickle sun
Laved in the TV's gaudy narcosis
Of couplings, wails and mirthful violence,
To cook without fire and cool without ice,
Miraculously message and instantly heed
Myriad faceless fellow mountain eaters,
I am one of countless pyrophagic predators,
Always with apologies to be sure,
To peel the arbored pelt from sinless hills,
Shred and heap their timeless pillars
In acidic ossuaries on dying burns.
It is my due to fatten
On the primordial black haunches within,
My due to commodify the eternal hills,
To dine on the flesh of my only earth.