My father buried to the neck in coal,
when the blast he set went off too soon
and the shaft sluiced rock like water roaring down,
pouring it over him in a rattling stream
until only his head could move,
hung suspended there an hour or more
before somebody came and raised the cry.
Men came, pickaxed and scraped
the brittle fist-sized shards of anthracite,
whose weight, like someone sitting on his chest,
squeezed off all breath except the hollow wheeze
his waning strength forced in and out.
He seemed a drowning man to those who dug
black diamonds by the shovelful and hurled
a month’s pay down the gangway in less time
than bosses would allow a man to eat.
No doubt, they marveled as they dug
at fortune turned bad like a tainted wish,
how months a man could shovel only stone
dreaming of a run of coal like that
to have it come a curse and leave him like
a miser buried in his bin of coins.
He laughed at that when I was old
as he was when good fortune broke three ribs,
and left the seam he’d spent six months to prime
for other men to dig.
“God loves a joke,” he said,
emphysema filling up his lungs,
the wet cough rattling in his chest
like running coal.
©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS
William John Watkins 