John and Lisa's Blue Skies Blog – Soaring with God

This poem commemorates the December 6, 1907 explosion that killed over 500 men (including my great-grandfather) and boys. May we never forget. This poem won a Third Place Prize from the Poetry Society of Virginia in 2012.  Originally published at Spirit of St. Bart’s.

Monongah’s Miners

Hoping, you bid farewell to the hills
Of the Old Country. Your heart held courage.
You prayed, “Our Father, hallowed
Be Thy Name.” The ship bore more than bodies
Looking for a better life, new miners
Whose clothing and lungs would soon be black.

Blasting for coal made daytime black
As night. Back-breaking work beneath hills
Of West Virginia. Monongah’s miners
Trusted they’d see dawn of a new courageous
Day, have a chance to hug warm bodies
Of wife and kids, welcome the next hallowed

Sunday. But the bosses held nothing hallowed
(Not St. Nicholas Day) with their hearts black
And cold. Only reputation mattered as bodies
Poured from numbers Six and Eight mines, hills
Overflowed with loved ones. The widows’ courage
And love eclipsed the world of coal mines.

My mother told of you working the mines.
The explosion. Oh, how the story is hallowed
To me! Great-grandpa, I admire your courage.
I stare, drawn in by dusty black-
And-white photos. I travel to those hills
And walk amid graves where, somewhere, your body

Rests. Please hear me: You gave me my body.
You live on in me. Your sacrifice in the mines
Has not been in vain. I gaze upon rolling hills
Where your eyes rested, too. This hallowed
Ground touches my soul. I gasp at the black
Granite monument. Those men, so courageous!

Bless me and help me live always with courage.
We’re eternal souls, I know, not merely mortal bodies.
Coffin upon coffin lined Main Street on that black
Day. Still, I see here houses of today’s miners.
I watch geese taking flight, feeling myself hallowed.
Tears of joy come as I hear laughter on the hills.

Monongah’s miners embodied courage.
Coal blackened their bodies, but never their souls most-hallowed.
Miners know black coal is cradled within green hills.

Just woke up in a body bag, a body bag, a body bag.
I just woke up in a body,
maybe now I’ll understand things.

Competing, always competing….
But then go to a morgue.
Who knew anything?
Who had any power?

How did we take a crap before we had an app?
How can we have heroes with only Ones and Zeroes?
Is it too late to decide our own fate?

If the Beatitudes were attitudes
for the multitudes,
there’d be less need for Quaaludes.

For a mountain top
experience to mean anything
you have to have spent
some time down in the valleys.

Autumn breeze
billows flags at harbor’s edge:
Dreams take flight

—————

Heavy gray clouds
float in, threatening rain —
Yet Sun’s above

—————

Blue awnings
flanked by red and yellow leaves:
Good morning!

—————

God says:
Don’t make this life
too complicated… just
get through all the stupidity
and silly stuff — then
you get to be with Me.
It’s simple. Just trust.

You know, God, this world
is crazy — You made it so…
While waiting for You,
we do stupid shit. See?
This life drags on and on
to us, while to You
a thousand years are
as a day. Right?
Pardon our stupidity.
We are lonely, depressed —
tired of waiting. We want
You — but you seem
to delay, O Lord….
We do stupid shit
because we’re tired
of waiting — but You know,
we only want YOU!

Born on Ash Wednesday,
the pattern’s set:
celebration is mourning
and mourning is celebration.
The hermitess journeys far
without leaving her cell —
burning within and without.

Perhaps a bit of eye make-up
to brighten the day,
but the nearest color is gray.
Perhaps roasted S’mores tonight,
but the merry flames blacken
amid the fight — ah,

She remembers this joy:
a pleasant life-long task,
a most uncommon vocation —
to suffer, to lose, to cry,
as treasures turn to ash.

Nuns in their monasteries are
never called to such poverty
or distress as the ashen
hermitess within
the embers of her heart aglow —
poised to flash.