Indian summer day
aboard Pete Seeger’s sloop.
Net is cast into the Hudson
flop onto deck
three eels, saturated
with PCBs oozing into river
from General Electric capacitor plants
north of Albany.
Pete is angry,
for these American eels.
He will not live to see
the dredging of this poison,
thirty years off.
Sky above sails
fills with flumes of acid
smoke, burns the wings
of moths & wildflower petals.
This sloop named Clearwater,
as a child I grasp
hopefulness versus
dreadful odds.
I know smallness.
I don’t yet know futility.
Bio:
Jason O'Toole is a Rhysling Award nominated poet, musician, and elder advocate. He is the author of two poetry collections published by The Red Salon. He was the singer for the NY Hardcore band Life's Blood and currently collaborates with the experimental composers Alec K. Redfearn and Herr Lounge Corps.