Jean Smiling Coyote

In 2016, a hog Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) was proposed for the Spoon River Valley (see Chicago Tribune article 12/28/2016). My objection was submitted as the poem attached. The Trib doesn’t publish poems from readers. The CAFO was defeated, no thanks to my poem. I read it once to a group and people liked it. I think it’s a good poem and want to share it with more people. I have friends in Evanston; shop there; participate in the Library’s History Book Discussion Group; have spoken for environmental causes, including testimony to MWRD to save Isabella Woods. I’ve been over 15 for longer than I like.

I am the land.

I am the air.

I am the grasses and trees and flowers.

I am the animals.

I am the water.

I am Spoon River Valley.

Earth has carried me across thousands of miles of its face – heaving me up and sinking

me down,

Covering me with limestone and shale and siltstone and chert,

Growing lush forests of ferns, then laying them down into my swamps and turning them

into coal;

Wearing away my body for millions of years,

Then covering me with ice, then melting it;

Then bringing the glacier close, and blowing its cold breath over me, and when it

melted, washing me with loess and sand.

People came to me from places I do not know of.

They made spear points of my chert and hunted my animals to survive.

These people were here.

Then there were people who learned how to grow maize and beans and squash from

people farther south;

These people built Dickson Mounds and drank water from my streams.

Almost yesterday, new people came to me from far to the east.

They had already been taught how to grow my crops, how to hunt my game.

My People’s relatives had taught them how to live here.

But the new people, ungrateful, brought disease and guns and strange animals, to a

place which had Plenty.

They drove away my People and killed those who tried to stay.

All are gone.

They killed all the biggest animals my People had thanked for food: Bison and Wapiti.

They almost killed my Whitetails, but stopped in time.

Some of the new people brought pigs with them and like to eat them.

They used to keep small groups of pigs on family farms and let them live outside most

of the time.

The pigs liked to cover their skin with mud and make a mess, but these didn’t bother me

much, since they weren’t much bigger than a buffalo wallow – though they smelled

worse.

Now people from somewhere else want to put 20,000 pigs in a building for food.

Who asked for these pigs to be here?

Who wants them for food?

Do these people live in my Valley?

Or do they live thousands of miles away?

I want to know.

I want to know who wants all these pigs here, imprisoned, to foul my sweet air and

water, to turn my land into a stinking mud-hole.

Will all these people who want to eat these pigs, come to me and live with them?