Memories of Coal: Miner Dollars

Memories of Coal: Miner Dollars

Coal Mining Exhibit

Bond poem, Horrell photo, Martell background

David Bond, Beth Martell, Doc Horrell

The Light That Shatters Darkness Exhibit

Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

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Text, JPG photographs

English

Poetry, photography

Exhibit Window #13

Memories of Coal: Miner Dollars

Deep underground
between tapestries

of dusted coal face
and black shale

seams they chisel
loose pyrite discs

called “dollars”
dense auric crystals

not worth much
yet hoarded and

caressed as if time
present and time

past might be
captured in an icon

and I wonder if
they ever feel

sudden yearning
an uneasy hunger for

shallow seas among
the calamites and

those scarabs of sun
a world of blind

fish and crickets
where some fear

the darkness
yet return to it.

Photographs of miner eating lunch, miner dollars