In The Mines Of Mexico They Weep

Now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos . . . . the elder encourages the younger and shows him how . . . they two shall launch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for itself and looks unabashed on the lesser orbits of the stars and sweeps through the ceaseless rings and shall never be quiet again. - Walt Whitman, in the preface to Leaves of Grass.

In a twilight pilgrimmage
via these frost cracked streets
close to the Campbell shaft
full of our fathers breath and breathing,
we unfold our own cloth on the Fourth of July,
one crease at a time on the crags
near the Vista in Warren, down from
the Loma Linda and the old mine-boss housing.
Flashlights dangle from the hands
of children. The night catches us deeply
unaware, but they don't think like that,
they are that,
think more about the starting time,
and the firemen on top of the dumps
who signal the end by waving lanterns,
how they crave that sort of thing
up there on those mountains of slag
thinking, as ours do, of the breath
of canaries and candles deep in those old holes.

A persistent and unheard whimper
fills space on this weary-
happy picnic in July or maybe
it only fills the weariness with something else.
I clasp a child tight in my arms,
a finger closes the tender wound,
hush hush, our waiting begins, we settle down.
Our Fourth of July is a sweet tortuous ruin
thrown in a trash bin of appetites lost.
We've run from one excitement to another
thankful for a gentle sun, there was no burning
and there will be few scars if any.
The miles between this and that
contract like stars in heaven where
light reaches us much too late
and we as well, get there accordingly.

This is the anniversary of all
that's happened here
for each body on this ragged weathery quilt,
each poor soul and dumbstruck
face tipped up toward the sky,
the silence between one person and the next
is only the truth where commentary has failed.
I look around me one last time
before the sun takes all the light away -
and I count the faces I own, erase what's left,
a small town thing to do on an occasion like this.

The darkness is complete and the fireworks begin.
My daughter tells me, during one of the beautiful
interims which goes like this:
ooh, aah, wonderful! then another interim and another,
one day, the sun will die. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
as copper sulphur spark comets flower dark,
my father scatters in the sky, Oh! Mufasa, talk to me.