When Coal Was Reigning

When Coal Was Reigning

An early morning fog lifts off the meadow.
Another day is dawning on the hill.
Houses lacking paint still dot the valley.
With memories are the worked out coal mines filled.

The stores once prospered with the rush of business,
and rumbles of long coal trains filled the air.
Once upon a time there by the station
streetcars on their tracks would wait for fares.

Once shiny rails are rusted now, and silent
as grass and weeds grow up between the ties.
The timbers on the tipple are all rotting.
In fields small aspen and wild brambles rise.

The young ones they have moved off to the cities,
while stores long shuttered gather dust and fade.
With every changing of another season
these thoughts into an old man’s head parade:

Of times when things were so very different;
when many families in this town were raised;
of days when men rode down the shafts to labor;
when cattle in the nearby pastures grazed.

He thinks of when the school was filled with laughter,
not boarded and neglected like it stands;
of days when folks walked many miles to work here,
and most all men in town had calloused hands.

He shakes his head and wonders what is coming.
A tear is shed at thoughts of where he’ll go.
They’ve even closed the little clapboard church down
that his ancestors founded years ago.

A day will come and not so far away now,
he’ll lay to rest right here for ever more.
Near to long-gone neighbors and their kinfolk,
not far from ones who died in all the wars.

And who’ll be left to hand down all the stories
of all the good times that once filled this place?
Who’ll reminisce about days when coal was reigning?
Will time all trace of this small town erase?