Valley of Ashes
The morning light is frail as the stalk
of a lily, greenish, as if ready to droop
back into night and put out the sun.
I’ve traveled all the way from my lush
valley in Wales, a miner’s daughter
and now a miner’s wife, staring out
the doorway at desolation, not a tree
or anything green as far as I can see,
only rows of unpainted shacks, just
a step between front stoop and dusty,
dirt street, gray as a layer of ashes
in the feeble dawn.
Back home, our company bungalows
were built of native stone, our valley
ringed by mountains, wildflowers
dotting the green meadow grass
with a dozen colors.
As I watch the woman across the road
scrub clothes on a big washboard,
I begin to cry.
My two little girls are asleep, oblivious
to the dirty light, the stretch of gray streets
that will flow with mud in the spring.
They don’t yet hear the mine’s
machinery grating out the minutes,
or the sound of cloth rubbed vigorously
against corrugated metal.
When they awake, I’ll plait their hair
without ribbons and dress them in gray,
as I begin to teach them to live without color.
I will teach them not to miss trees,
tender grass or flowers.
They will learn to love their gray dresses
and the landscape of dirt, gray rock and brush.
They will learn to see beauty
in a diatom on a lump of coal,
or a dust phantasm
rising in a sudden wind.
