A poem by Dave Lucas, plus a quick history lesson and some thoughts on rivers and the tree-hugging commies who love them…
River on Fire
Stranger, the way of the world is
crooked,
and anything can burn. Nothing
impossible.
Who comes to send fire upon the earth
may find
as much already kindled, may find his
city
bistre and sulfurous. Pitched and
grimed
On those suffered banks we sat down
and wept
There the prophets, if there had been
prophets,
would have baptized us in fire. Who
says impossible
they fill his mouth with ash, they quench him
as if a man could be made steel. A
crooked way
the world wends, and the rivers,
and the prophets.
Go down and tell them what you have
seen:
that the river burned and was not consumed.
Dave Lucas is an American poet and essayist. He is the current poet laureate of the state of Ohio. Born and raised in Cleveland, he received his B.A. at John Carroll University, M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Virginia, and M.A. and Ph.D. in English language and literature at the University of Michigan. – From Lucas’ column in Toledo, OH’s The Blade: https://www.toledoblade.com/a-e/2018/10/21/poetic-world-we-live-in-dave-lucas-cleveland/stories/20181014005
Now for the history lesson. Captain Planet may be off the air but his legacy lives on…
In his poem, David Lucas evokes the imagery and memory of a significant event in his home state’s–and the nation’s– history: the Cuyahoga River Fire of 1969.
1968 was not the first time this river in northeastern Ohio found itself billowing smoke–in fact it was the 13th recorded instance of the waterway igniting. By the late 60s, the river was so polluted that Time magazine described it as “oozing” rather than flowing. Luckily, the 13th time was the charm, and the fire (as well as the Time article) spurred action at the federal level. The Environmental Protection Agency was created in 1970, and two years later in 1972, the Clean Water Act was passed over a Nixon veto.
Writing for the Washington Post, Jonathan Adler points out that the 1969 Cuyahoga river fire is more a fable than anything else. Cleveland area governments, Adler notes, had already invested heavily in cleaning up the river by 1969, and states across the country had passed clean water regulations of their own by the time the federal government got its act together. Adler argues that credit should go to state and local governments who took environmental cleanup into their own hands in the 1960s, rather than a federal government that was late to the game.
I agree with Adler to some extent; many of the strongest protections for rivers, lakes, and wetlands come at the state level, where clean water laws are often more stringent than the floor set by the federal Clean Water Act. Still, the Clean Water Act is one of the most successful pieces of legislation in US history, environmental or otherwise. Furthermore, I would not be so quick to discount the importance of the “fable” of the Cuyahoga Fire. It may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, and it may have been spread in the media in a slightly hyperbolic fashion (though how hyperbolic one can be about a body of moving water getting pan-seared is an open question), but it is an important myth in American culture. The myth is one of fire and brimstone and muck and hell that is overcome and leads to rebirth. It lead directly to legislation that legitimized a nascent national environment movement. It is a proverb which David Lucas taps into in his poem River on Fire–
“[T]he river was burned and was not consumed.”
The Cuyahoga River was certainly burned, 13 times. But it survived. Where once no fish swam, now over 65 species swim. How the miraculous turnaround? By the concerted efforts of people who had seen their river burn enough times. People who took action and the protection of the river seriously. The River on Fire is a vital myth in this regard; it shows us how far we’ve come since our rivers were oozing, since they were ablaze; it shows us that positive social change can happen, and it can happen quickly; it provides guidance moving forward.
No, there are no more rivers in America at risk of combusting, thanks to environmental protection laws. But our problems are still many: dangerous levels of lead in drinking water and in paint in old houses, urban air degradation, injection-induced earthquakes, rising sea levels and more intense storms, to name a few. These are problems that require action at every level–local, state, federal, and even global. The River on Fire offers us both a sober reflection and roadmap to the future: we’ve polluted the hell out of this great continent, but we also know that we can clean it up.
America, and the world, may be burning, but it will not be consumed.
Sources:
Time Article: http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,901182,00.html
EPA History: https://www.epa.gov/history
Clean Water Act: https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/history-clean-water-act
Also: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/clean-water-act-2012_n_1874980.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer_us=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_cs=5u9MwYeMGAKk_BqIAiR5_w
WaPo article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/06/22/the-fable-of-the-burning-river-45-years-later/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5ff9d6995713
Adler’s law review article: https://web.archive.org/web/20130122050545/http://law.cwru.edu/faculty/adler_jonathan/publications/fables_of_the_cuyahoga.pdf
Fishing the Cuyahoga: https://www.nps.gov/cuva/planyourvisit/fishing.htm