River on fire

Posted on Categories Ideas for Preserving Our Planet
Australia river methane fire
Photo credit: Condamine River in flames. Jeremy Buckingham via Facebook

A politician from New South Wales,

launched a boat-trip chasing bubble trails,

In the blink of an eye,

Set the river on fire,

Methane blazed a melting gunwhale.

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Story version 2

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A Green party chap from Down Under,

Took a boat trip to view fracking blunders,

Lighted a river on fire,

raised his camera eye higher,

His boat melted in the methane wonder.

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Postscript

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They say it’s mere coincidence

Fracking fissures not the cause

Fire on water

A normal event,

Methane burns hot under natural laws.

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This story broke several days ago: it’s about an Australian politician who demonstrated that the Condamine River is bubbling methane. I  believe, as he does, that methane bubbles are  escaping from seams opened up by nearby fracking. A Guardian article lays out the controversy. To  find out more about the side effects of fracking for natural gas you might be interested in this David Suzuki Foundation article.

Below is a video posted by Jeremy Buckingham, the politician who set the Condamine River on fire with a barbecue lighter.

In the two story limericks I have used The Secretkeeper Writing Prompt #34 words: Trip; Fire; River; Eye; Melt. Please note that the detail about the boat melting was inspired by the prompt rather than reported fact.

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Published by Janice

My name is Janice.  I started blogging as Ontheland when I moved from Toronto to a rural area near Kingston, Ontario in Canada.  Over time I have found myself writing poetry, mostly in Japanese forms, such as haiku and haibun.  One of my deepest interests is the natural world: the joy of it and how we can look after it better.

19 thoughts on “River on fire”

  4. Great poem Janice. Wonderful to see you onto our environmental issues. Yes fracking is being fought by grassroots groups and the GREENS political party here. We have a LOCK THE GATE movement where farmers lock their gates against these, (usually multi national) enemies of our environment. And groups turn up to ensure the gates stay locked.

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    1. Well Mr. Buckingham’s efforts reached me via Twitter..I think the story went global as fracking is being pushed and fought over everywhere. There is something about fire and water that is attention catching and flags the message of contamination and harm to air, earth, water , and global atmosphere. It seems that there is much strong environmental activism in Australia!

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      2. You’re right–not as easy as they seem. I think modern writers don’t necessarily rhyme them but I wanted to try traditional first. I’ll keep an eye out for limericks from you 🙂

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      4. Standing by 😉 but seriously, you probably don’t plan something like that …It’ll pop out when the mood hits…spring is a busy time!

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  7. You introduced an very relevant topic in your poems. It’s good to see the fight across the world. Us ‘little people’ have much common sense and we are horrfied by the prospect of fracking. But we’re being ignored even by our governments. Have they gone mad?

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    1. It seems that to some extent we are caught on a treadmill — scrambling for the last pockets of resources rather than
      having the courage to focus on new ways of harnessing energy and putting a stop to destruction.

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