Mountain Poem

© Michael Comiskey
Big Blackstrap Mountain stood three hundred million years,
and saw a thousand ice sheets come and go.
Its slopes held hardwoods near ninety feet high.

They stripped the trees first.
Then four hundred foot
of mountaintop
--overburden--
was blown through the air
and dumped in the hollows.
A dragline cut 29 inches
of clean coal
from the carcass.

Now a grey stump
two miles square
greets the eye.
An earth and slate dam,
with its deepening pool
of black sulfurous
coal-wash water hangs
above the valley.

In erstwhile hollows
seep orange oozy eddies
of iron pyrite--
fool’s gold.
But who is the fool?
And who has the gold?

Nothing can live
in the alkaline soil.
A Mars lander could come here
and not know the difference,
except for the Astroturf softball fields
shown on TV.
You know the ones--
they’re lighted at night.
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