WEBVTT

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Well, that's enough
of that sort of stuff.

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This is a poem not too
ancient called Mining Town.

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And it was the fruit
of several visits

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to the mining country
in Pennsylvania

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up around Scranton
and Wilkes-Barre,

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where some of the towns have
been so mined for so many years

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that they're all
hollow underneath.

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And once in a
while, a house will

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break through the thin crust
and just fall down a mineshaft.

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And some of the people
in these little towns

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never know when their house
might suddenly tilt up.

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It leads for a certain suspense.

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Mining Town.

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Sheds for machines
that lower tons

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of men, hug dirt for dear life.

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Clapboard houses lose
great clapboards the way

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a dying oak sheds bark.

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One house they tell
of plunged nose

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down into a shaft last year
with cries of sleepers waking,

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falling.

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Like boys and sneakers
testing limber ice,

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gas stations growing
bold now inch up near.

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Who recollects that
Kitchen Counter

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World straddles pit one?

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Dull coal oil-colored
clouds graze to the west.

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Born in this town, you
learn to sleep on edge.

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Always on edge, to
grow up like a tree

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locked to the
wind's sharp angle.

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When fear tells, it tells
out of the corner of an eye.

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A rickety house
balancing in uncertainty.

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