Nuclear Waste Dumps

 

It’s like burning a book, or a bad chapter
That can’t be rewritten. Don’t break Our story.

It’s like an earthquake, this unsteady debate
As endless vows of promise inflame our skin

It’s like an empty river. Old scar trees look sadder
When canoes don’t venture. Don’t put sorrow here.

It’s like a fallen sacred tree. The space it leaves
Can’t be refilled. Don’t put emptiness here.

It’s like a broken sky. An atomic bomb did that
Don’t disturb all the dead ones, all the babies.

It’s like family. It affects each one of us, past and future.
We got each other. We own this place. We know this place.

It will poison the Earth. You know who She is!
Would you really kill your mother for a part-time job?

Ali Cobby Eckermann

Author: Ali Cobby Eckermann

Ali Cobby Eckermann’s first collection 'little bit long time' was written in the desert and launched her literary career in 2009. In 2013 Ali toured Ireland as Aust. Poetry Ambassador and won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and Book Of The Year (NSW) for Ruby Moonlight, a massacre verse novel. In 2014 Ali was the inaugural recipient of the Tungkunungka Pintyanthi Fellowship at Adelaide Writers Week, and the first Aboriginal Australian to attend the International Writing Program at University of Iowa. In 2017 Ali received the inaugural Windham Campbell Award for Poetry from Yale University USA.

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