Tell Me
       

Tell me: does the mountain remember
being larded with blasting powder?
Is there caught in the throats of tapped
out mines memory of the grind of iron claw
on granite, the throb of engines with their haul,
trod of oxen, grunt of men?

What of the weird and waiting silence
when the mineralogists had gone back home?
The rusted cranes, their bent and broken
backs, abandoned. Stone pylons hollow,
with their fire gone cold.
Is there, from these, no breath at all?

Tell me: does the river remember what is gone?
Night laughter from long-leveled shanties,
paddys, guineas, hunkies, polaks, and squareheads.
Some died, some stayed, most of them moved on.

As for the forests: do the killed wolves sing?
Do they mind their wild-haired beauty feared,
their good not jotted down?

Tell me: does the land remember what is gone?

Tweet

Copyright © 2018 Julia Carter Aldrich All rights reserved
from Life Lines
Dos Madres Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission