Digging Deep
Miners, digging down into the Earth’s treasures,
miners, squinting into the unknowable,
tearing into the abyss, into that which lies before them,
their lamps making stars and shadows.
In a place as dark as a child’s funeral
Miners are scouring the underworld
In search of gold or coal or one good reason
To continue ripping into the mantle.
At shift’s end a whistle screams.
The miners rise up from their indecipherable soot.
They return to their homes and families,
dragging all their blacknesses into the kitchen.
They eat their weight in hard labour.
They drink like prisoners condemned.