Fukishima and my granddaughter

The 9.0 earthquake that generated the tidal wave that took out four nuclear reactors on the northeastern coast of Japen occurred March 11, 2011. A little over a year later, Ella Dixon Geyer was born, on April 28, 2012. This is a short poem about those two very disparate, but powerful events.

Fallout

We need to respond to what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico with all the creative energy we can bring to bear. This is so huge in such a negative way, if you are someone who is disturbed by what is slowly smothering us day by day, then let's rise up and DO something about it. Join together. Create. Write songs, poems, stories real and imagined; paint, draw, photograph, sculpt, carve. Create a body of work as vast in scope and size as this ever-growing spill, and let the oil companies and politicians know how many people all over the world are being affected by this catastrophe!

Send examples of your creations or post them on the new Facebook Page: "Artists Respond to the Gulf Oil Spill."

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Artists-Respond-to-the-Gulf-Oil-Spill/122378651135559

Here's one from me, written 21 years ago, after the Exxon Valdez disaster:

Fallout

Innocence in your eyes,

you ask,

"Daddy, we will be safe from the oil?"

I swallow hard.

How can I say to you,

"No! One day it or something like it

something we have created

something I have given my blessing to

(if only by my silence)

will kill us all."

instead I lie,

"Yes, punkin. We'll be safe."