Ghosts
Ghosts Between two shafts in a hole, in a mazey brown brook shifted away from our work, we see ourselves mirrored and startle at us colorless. Still, we show long noses stoppsy by smoke as kilns blaze outside, towers lit by orange flames, then rinsed by showers, black juice and tan sprinkles gushing beside sweat where we dipped to shovel deeper for ore. Empty lunch pails at our sides, the litters, freighted, carry us where we failed. No one's left for our kin when we fall to no new heaven. But wishing their god were gentle, they stoop to rails for wine then wish our lives weren't erased. Yet that won't stop the choir's dirge, or our bones cremated to fertilizer , or grow the wheat, grind the flour or buy priests' tiny wafers. We can't chant beside them, voiceless, or flap a dance to death. No cards in dark saloons will ease us again. Though, now, no gullies lurk. We'll never know even...