Some Mornings…

Some mornings you should definately have had your tea before looking at what is in the newsfeed. A friend who lives here in Ireland, but is from Preston, Lancashire, shared a Daily Mail Online news clip about the four minor earthquakes noted in Blackpool a week after controversial fracking re-commenced. Blackpoolsuffers four earthquakes. The fracking company, Cuadrilla, was ordered to cease in 2011, after two earthquakes were over 2.3. Given that the nuclear power station, Sellafield, is just  73 kilometres (or 45 miles) up the coast from Blackpool, it is worrying. The Republic of Ireland opted to ban fracking last year after vigourous campaigning. From the research we did of evidence of fracking in the USA, earthquakes are not uncommon and continue to escalate in Richter rate. In Arkansas, they continued for six months  before the earth settled down after companies were ordered to cease fracking.

And it did put a pall over the day. I am a baby boomer. We are congenitally programmed to be anxious about anything nuclear going  ‘pop.’ I lived in Yorkshire after Chernobyl and many upland farmers in the north of England simply could not market their sheep for a number of years because the rain that weekend had been too radioactive. There are all kinds of radioactive fallout.

 

Some Mornings

 

Some mornings you awaken

with a layer less skin.

The earthquakes in Lancashire

sends shivers in ripples

from Granny’s spinal fractures.

I remember there is

a nuclear reactor

just up the coast from there.

Flashback to telly ads

from the 1980s –

Protect and Survive! Or not.

Far is always too near.

A pall falls, despite autumn

rusts and golds and mist.

 

Then I hear the raw crying.

See whooper swans have come back.

Hear wildness in harsh voices.

Hug hard their absolute grace.

 

Copyright © Bee Smith 2018

 

 

 

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