‘Alligator Alcatraz’
“alea non iacta est”
It’s not “Alligator Alcatraz,” Judge Williams writes,
striking the moniker from the record.
The site is TNT, a name that ignites
a different kind of spark, a powder keg stored
in the River of Grass, where the panther still stalks,
and the bonneted bat wheels through the sweet, damp air;
where the Tribe’s sacred water softly talks
of a world before concrete, before man’s despair.
A major federal action, the Court holds,
though they built it in eight days without a review—
no Environmental Impact Statement prepared;
the damage a detention camp might do.
No notice, no comment, no serious view taken
at the runoff of carcinogens on new-laid tar;
at the light pollution that leaves the night shaken,
from the 800,000 square feet of paving that bars,
The sheet flow of water, the ancient, slow pulse
that feeds the cypress knees and the stork’s high nest.
They paved and they built, and the usual consultation
with the Miccosukee people was simply not addressed.
The harm is irreparable. The law is not waived
by a state logo on a uniform’s sleeve;
by a delayed check, Trump’s political scheme –
this project, the Judge declared is a federal deed.
The funding was promised. The request came from D.C.
The buses that arrive bear the federal seal.
The planes that deport are owned by the USA.
This action is hybrid, and starkly real.
The failure to act—to simply obey
procedures that ask us to be courteous and see—
The pen strikes a verdict: the Court declares aloud:
This cruel status quo cannot endure.
The Sunbelt lights halt. The new asphalt ends.
The fence line recedes for the Tribe’s access trails.
No more detainees will be brought to these fens.
The will of the many, for now, prevails.
A bond of one hundred dollars is set,
a symbolic weight for a priceless land;
for the panther’s lost habitat, not paid for yet;
the sacred sky returned, letting nature expand.
Of the ‘Glades. The injunction is granted in part.
The construction must cease, the expansion must freeze,
to allow the careful environmental review to proceed
And by listening to the whisper of the cypress trees.
For we are the trustees, the Order reminds,
of each generation. The die is not cast.
The spirit is enriched when the law truly finds
a way to make a conservation victory last.
