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How does it feel to be the one?

How does it feel to be the one?
Permanently disabled with a nervous disorder
Crippled hands, funny walk
Whose two sons are also disabled
Having lived 20 years here in the beautiful peaceful country
Along with nearby small, seemingly harmless, industry
Birdseye does fruits and vegetables

Only now her water turns to a murky orange
Tests full of heavy metals including arsenic
The water they have been drinking for twenty years
Is it something from Birds Eye
Still spraying water out, is it toxic water?
Or Chevron years ago dumping junk 'cause they can
'Cause they aren't the ones drinking it

Birds Eye provides many jobs for the small town
The local, state, federal government, Health Department
(DEQ) Department of Environmental Quality are doing little
Powerless, ignorant, apathetic, corrupt, paid off
Or intimidated by fancy corporate lawyers
But clearly not effective to prevent this tragedy from continuing
Much less to provide restitution

Her daughter-in-law who lives across the street, has gone to live with grandma
Hoping against hope the baby will not be born with defects
Her home is worth nothing, it can't be sold or rented
With the water testing so bad.
On disability, where would they go, how would they live?

How does it feel to be the one?
Slipping into ill health and watching loved ones suffer
All because….
Nobody thought it could happen to me

Is there any help, any relief, any hope
We watch from our homes and wonder
Will the arsenic-heavy metal plume spread my way
Will the proposed toxic dump a mile down the other road
Get their permit any time soon?
Will the effects of the huge factory farm
two mile the other way devastate the environment

And I wonder
How does it feel to be the one?
Whose home, whose water, whose life, who's loved ones
Are being poisoned
Not by nature. Not by hurricane, tornado or flood,
Not by an act of God
But by what …….Money hungry monsters?

How do they feel?

KoKo July 9, 2008