Open Pit Dreams

Midnight in a small town

where the heat has gone to sleep

and moonlight sparkles on the edge

of each descending circle

leading down to the pool of green water

at the base of the open

pit mine.

            A coyote pack is howling

its way along 2^nd Avenue

giving voice to everyone’s worst fears.

Drought, they cry, and drought

again, while they keep

water’s secrets to themselves. And on

they go, united in

their purpose, moving slowly

through dry starlight.

                                  Dig and chisel,

burn and growl, tear the heart

out from the Earth, place

it in a glass case

and open a museum where a desert

used to be. Scatter tailings

to the wind, bend your backs

men, listen to

the copper crying to be free.

Here’s your money, here’s

your life. Daybreak’s coming and

you’ll see the way out

where sunlight dances on the broken

yellow line along the center

of the road.

                  Welcome to our memories:

the tools grown tired, the instruments

that dentists used to extract

pain, the drills once wound

by expert hands, the ones that saw

in a tooth what the machinery

outside saw in the ground

when it worked its way to the nerve

and an underground scream

there never was whiskey enough

to hold back.

                    Weekend is a Mexican

fiesta. Skirts flare into rainbows

on the plaza. Even the former smelter

starts to sing, and there is music

behind locked doors to the exhibit

of old typewriters whose keys

play sharps and flats in honor

of dust and loneliness.

                                  Black cloud

on the sky’s north side, white light

from the south and no border

between them. Nothing stops

the past when it goes

from door to door on javelina steps

as the day dissolves at sunset.

There it goes, in wonder and in fear

of ever changing but

sure footed and determined

to reach the open pit before

it fills with stars.

                           Check in

at the depot for the journey

back in time, the iron heart

that drove the engine, the whistle

and the scream of wheels

at every bend. The rails just slide

away into the desert, and the sunlight

pays its way in weeds.

                                   How pretty now

the edge to every step

appears with its strip of summer light

that interrupts the blue

flow shadowing from the circling path

down to the poisonous glow

at the base of the wound. Did it hurt, did

the shovel bite

where it ought to have kissed the earth

for giving shrubs and cactus place

to grow? It was only their misfortune

to have put down roots

in land worth more destroyed

than left alone.

                       It’s too late to put back

what was taken from the ground.

Let it shine wherever

it is now. The work is over. Easy come

the vultures from the evening sky

balancing eternities

on their outstretched wings.