Pit Pony                                  


There are only a few left, he says,
kept by old Welsh miners, souvenirs,
like gallstones or gold teeth, torn
from this "pit," so cold and wet
my breath comes out a soul up
into my helmet's lantern beam,
anthracite walls running, gleaming,
and the floors iron-rutted with tram tracks,
the almost pure rust that grows and waves
like orange moss in the gutters of water
that used to rise and drown.
He makes us turn all lights off, almost
a mile down.  While children scream,
I try to see anything, my hand touching
my nose, my wife beside me—darkness
palpable, like a velvet sack over our heads,
even the glow of watches left behind. 
This is where they were born, into
this nothing, felt first with their cold noses
for the shaggy side and warm bag of black milk,
pulled their trams for twenty years
through pitch, past birds that didn't sing,
through doors opened by five-year-olds
who sat in the cheap, complete blackness
listening for steps, a knock. 
And they died down here, generation
after generation.
The last one, when it dies in the hills,
not quite blind, the mines closed forever,
will it die strangely?  Will it wonder
dimly why it was exiled from the rest
of its race, from the dark flanks of the soft
mother, what these timbers are that hold up
nothing but blue?  If this is the beginning
of death, this wind, these stars?



NOTE: This one is just the usual childhood experience, which ended up being a metaphor for life itself, at least that’s what Garrison Keillor seems to think since he’s featured it twice on Writer’s Almanac.

Theater


Like the neighborhood kind
you went to as a kid, full
of yellow light and red
velvet curtains and everybody
there, friends, bullies throwing
popcorn, somebody with red hair.
The roof is leak-stained like the bloody
Footprints of the beast from 20,000 fathoms,
there's a yo-yo demonstration by
a greasy man in a sequined suit,
the girl you love is there somewhere
but you can't find her, or if you do
she's with some jerk with muscles.
And the show won't start.  There's whistling
and stomping, paper airplanes and 3-D
glasses until you don't even care
anymore because your head is tired,
a stone atop a tendril, and you just
want to sleep, when, sure enough,
the curtain finally rises,
darkness falls,
and here it comes.




NOTE: This one was a dream, but I like it for being uncharacteristic of me, unlike so many of my usual things which my wife says could all be titled “I’m from the South and My Mama Didn’t Love Me None.”

All of Us Are Children


floating down a river on our beds.
It's dark, and we're in pajamas,
though in the west, behind
the palms, there's still a thread
of pink, a glow of violet,
as if we've just come in from play.
Each bed has a paper lantern
and we see each other in the glow.
Parents watch from verandahs on the shore,
drinking together and hushing us,
but it does no good. 
When we're almost
quiet, giggling starts again
and spreads like wind over water.
Our beds are so close they nudge,
tip, and lap,
and goldfish rise to the light
through the reflections
of our faces.
Then the river opens
into a sea
we begin to fill
like a whole new sky
and we are the stars.