On Mining and Prayers for Miners

While watching one of the prolonged segments concerning this weeks disaster: Utah Miners Buried....I heard yet another broadcaster tell a family "spokesperson" that "our prayers are with you" and I had to wonder...

Really? Do each and every one of those newscasters actually go and "pray" for the "victims" of such things? And what exactly are those things? Who exactly are the "victims"?

Not to be critical or profit from those that are awaiting word about a person buried in a mine, a snow cave or a child whose blood has been found in a hotel room from where she was abducted. But to focus in on that idea that death comes to us all and why is one death more important than another? Well obviously..it is big business i.e. "The News". It gets viewers, it distracts people from their own death more or less and it is "exciting". Not to miners no doubt and perhaps I'll find and post that old soggy poem called "In the Mines of Mexico, They Weep". Because all miners and miner families know exactly what this is about. It is about their worst fear and that fear would be: dying in a mine collapse.

My very own miner father demanded that when he died he should be cremated and not BURIED. Not even in death does a miner want to be buried...it is THAT bad. All the same...it is just death and I must wonder....why is it we do not wait with our breaths held for every single death as it approaches? I must wonder at how many people actually cry over someone else's death and realize in a very serious way that their own death is FAR more important than anyone else's. It's always been that way you know because a miner is really buried and might experience that thing called "the agony of the grave" that some of us Shia know all about.

Back to the point however. How on earth do people on the TV get away with saying such things as "our prayers" are with you. I have a feeling that most of them don't pray, don't know how to pray and do it about as often as they clean up their sheds out back. Once a week if you are conscientious and maybe once a month if you are the guilty type; and once a year if you only hope to find something lost and suspect it might be there and never if you are really messy, disorganized and have better things to think about and always have, always will. Those usually end up on Oprah and two British ladies go in and muck them out.

Muck of course.....is a mining term.

My prayers haven't been "with" anyone in particular except a girl I met in the ER the other day. She truly affected me and I've actually prayed for her twice specifically. I had good reason to. She was a miracle to me and I pray that I was a miracle to her.

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 or Shattuck shaft
full of our father's 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 palaces.
Flashlights dangle at dusk in the hands
of children. The night catches us deeply
unaware but children don't think like that

they are that

and think more about the starting time
and the firemen on top of the dumps
who begin and end the show
in a wave of lanterns.
How we crave that signal
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 in sweet-tortuous ruin
flung aside into a 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 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 -
count the faces I own, erase what's left.
It is a small town thing on such occasions.

The darkness is complete
when the fireworks begin.
My daughter tells me
during one of the beautiful
interims which go 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!