Author: John N. Miller
Location: Lexington, Virginia

John N. Miller is a retired professor who taught British and American lit and creative writing at Denison University in Granville, Ohio.

---

Eyewitness

Unmediated dead weight
in the grasp of two armed police,
she sees the ground dragged
through her knees receding
from the forest. Ahead
wait the patrol wagons
under the throb of helicopters.
More police? Reporters?
Somewhere TV cameras must be
whirring footage.   NO MORE NUKE
REACTORS    SAVE THE TREES   NO MORE . . .
bulldozers churn, barricades
splinter, on either side she sees
demonstrators dragged off boots,
legs, backsides, more dead weight
through the mud of a cleared forest
where the failsafe power plant will rise.
A wagon opens. Lifted, thrown in,
she feels it bump toward pavement
trailing sirens, pluming blue
exhaust behind her, speeding
out of action, out
of camera range, toward her official
sentence we won't hear or see
on Eyewitness News.

---

---