Drilling Down by Karla Linn Merrifield

He places his zafu
just so over
the Marcellus shale
It cushions his prolonged
sesshins sitting zazen
He counters hydrofracking mines
offsets the mineral rights of toxicity
negates greed
with daily meditation
God is Money?
In Money we trust?
One nation under Money?
No. One man’s Zen practice informs
the poetry of survival
The dharma of petroleum remains
deep in empty mind

 

                        for Dwain Wilder
                        with a line from Ellen Maloy

Appeared in Le Mot Juste, 2012

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A seven-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, Karla Linn Merrifield has had nearly 300 poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has eight books to her credit, the newest of which are The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica (Finishing Line Press) andLiberty’s Vigil, The Occupy Anthology: 99 Poets among the 99%, which she co-edited for FootHills Publishing. Forthcoming from Salmon Poetry is Athabaskan Fractal and Other Poems of the Far North. Her Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills) received the 2009 Eiseman Award for Poetry and she recently received the Dr. Sherwin Howard Award for the best poetry published in Weber - The Contemporary West in 2012. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye (www.centrifugaleye.com). Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com.