WEBVTT

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Well, of course I have
to read my fracking poem

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tonight of all nights.

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It takes a while to get to
the fracking but it's here.

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I was asked to do this by
Taylor Brorby, a young writer

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from North Dakota who has
seen his home landscape be

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devastated by fracking.

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And he edited a
wonderful anthology

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called Fracture: Essays, Poems,
and Stories about Fracking

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in America.

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But, well, we have to go
a few miles out of the way

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before we get there.

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And you'll recognize some, a
beloved pair of twin brother

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astronauts in this poem.

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Homeland Security.

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"What is a day to the astronaut
floating 200 miles above Earth?

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The Space Station whirling
fifteen and a half times a day

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around the planet while
he drifts weightless

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as if unmoving.

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Sipping meals from a plastic
pouch, is that how it works,

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keeping everything
contained against the drift?

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His twin is down there donating
biometrics to the database.

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What is he here to them?

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Their bones and
hearts and brains,

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that's what the
instruments want to know.

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Or what we've
taught them to want.

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The space twin will
pay the higher price

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for his unearthly habitation.

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Bodies need gravity
or some system

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that simulates the magnetic
pull of mantle and core.

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He can see home from
a porthole in space.

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The planet from
out here, sublime.

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A blue and white
ball so tender it

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might be made of glass, just
forming at the tip of the glass

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blower's rod.

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The Earth twin watches
his brother lift

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from the Cosmodrome, 0
to 17,000 in 12 minutes.

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It feels like the hand
of God has come down

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and grabbed you by the collar
and ripped you off the planet.

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You know you're either
going to float in space

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or you're going to be dead.

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What is Earth to the astronaut?

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The exception to emptiness.

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Boatloads of planets lie
further in the black concealment

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of space.

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Best that we don't know
their voraciousness and need.

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Our home, we know, is troubled.

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Yet still in the heyday of
its experiment with life.

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Thanks cyanobacteria for
your evolutionary largesse,

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the great oxygenation event
that made us possible.

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I'm writing this to find
my way into the fray

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over fracking, wild card
as it seems now that I've

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gone so far out into space.

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No one wants to hear again
about flaming water faucets,

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exploited towns and farms,
heartland riddled with quakes,

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water poisoned and
stuck back in the ground

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to find its way home.

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Space might be the only way to
see what kind of sky we need.

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And how the great carbonation
event might be flipping the way

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Earth does or doesn't do life.

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We say Blue Marble.

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We say Mother Earth.

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We say home.

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The astronaut says beautiful.

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Earth, from space, says keep me.

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The only thing that
matters is the carbon.

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So, Homeland Security means
leave it in the ground.

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Lock it up with
soldiers standing guard.

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Shelter it with
grassland and trees."

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