{"id":4335,"date":"2015-07-04T22:30:50","date_gmt":"2015-07-04T22:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=4335"},"modified":"2015-07-04T22:30:50","modified_gmt":"2015-07-04T22:30:50","slug":"miners-quest-to-don-petersen-a-poem-by-gary-beck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/miners-quest-to-don-petersen-a-poem-by-gary-beck\/","title":{"rendered":"Miner\u2019s Quest (To Don Petersen). A Poem by Gary Beck"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\n 
\nAnd the miners came down from the hills
\nonly once a month, to eat, drink, fight,
\nif they were lucky,
\nspend the night with a woman,
\ninstead of in jail.
\nFor sheriff Bennett met them at the edge of town
\nand gave them the same warning each time:
\n\u2018Have a good time, boys, but don\u2019t wreck the town.\u2019
\nAnd the miners nodded sincerely,
\nchorused, \u2018Sure, sheriff. You bet. We promise.\u2019
\n 
\nBut the sheriff was used to their rough ways
\nand knew they were there to escape the pressures
\nthat gripped them in the bowels of the earth.
\nAnd they weren\u2019t bad men, just childlike,
\ntoiling like slaves of eld, then seeking release.
\nThey meant their promises and meant no harm.
\nNevertheless, the sheriff hired extra deputies
\non the day the miners came to town
\nfor their monthly binge.
\n 
\nNow the miners respected the sheriff,
\nwho understood their need to blow off steam,
\nbut the deputies were another kind of cop.
\nMostly young, scared, acting tough to impress the hard men
\nwho only feared Mother Earth\u2019s crushing embrace
\nwaiting to hold them close, far beneath the surface.
\nAnd they mocked the posing deputies
\nwho wore one-way sun glasses to hide the uncertainty
\nthat made the miners mistrust them.
\n 
\nThere was one deputy the miners really hated.
\nReardon, a big-bellied bully, meaner than the rattlesnakes
\nthat sometimes tumbled down the mineshaft
\nand couldn\u2019t find their way to the surface again
\nand shared the dark confines with their fellow prisoners
\nand sometimes got lucky and bit someone,
\nbefore the miners could stomp them to death.
\nThe only thing the miners hated more than rattlers
\nwere the bosses, whose venom flowed from far away.
\n 
\nReardon always greeted them the same way,
\nslapping his club in his bulbous paw, scaring no one,
\nbut alert for the chance to hurt the miners.
\nThey despised him, staring through him,
\nanother dangerous clod of earth to be avoided ,
\nbut never feared, because he only trapped the unwary,
\nand if you labored deep below the ravaged earth
\nyou learned to be wary, or didn\u2019t survive
\nthe hungry pits that always beckoned.
\n 
\nSo the miners rushed to their favorite bars,
\nwhere bored trailer girls served the drinks
\nand didn\u2019t really care that a lot of hands
\ndid a lot of exploring of their veined bodies.
\nAnd they listened to the usual comments:
\n“That\u2019s a number one shaft. Deep hole. Dig that strata.”
\nAnd the girls snapped their gum in boredom,
\nfor they took worse abuse than words
\nfrom the harsh hands of their redneck boyfriends.
\n 
\nThe retired professor of something or other
\nmet them at \u2018Purple Nell\u2019s\u2019 and bought them drinks,
\npreached to them that they should spare the earth.
\nThey laughed kindly at him and explained it was their job,
\nif they didn\u2019t do it, the company would hire others
\neager to take their place in the mines, because
\nsomeone was always waiting to steal a man\u2019s job.
\nBut they never insulted the professor
\nwhile drinking his liquor.
\n 
\nThe miners never went to ivy covered schools,
\nhad no book learning, just blue collar skill,
\nacquired the hard way, in the pits of shattered dreams,
\nwhere the mines sapped the souls of men
\nwho never got used to the pressing rock above
\nand the dank, devouring dark below,
\nalways waiting, implacable as time,
\nto catch a careless miner in a moment\u2019s lapse,
\nthe last summons to the final ascent.<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n\"Gary<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nGary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn\u2019t make a living in theater. He has 11 published chapbooks. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction<\/em> (Skive Press), Expectations <\/em>(Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities<\/em>, Assault on Nature<\/em>, Songs of a Clerk<\/em>, Civilized Ways <\/em>(Winter Goose Publishing). Perceptions<\/em>, Displays<\/em>, Fault Lines and Tremors <\/em>will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response<\/em> will be published by Nazar Look. His novels include: Extreme Change <\/em>(Cogwheel Press) Acts of Defiance<\/em> (Artema Press). Flawed Connections <\/em>(Black Rose Writing). His short story collection, A Glimpse of Youth<\/em> (Sweatshoppe Publications). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City. A Miner’s Quest appears in Civillised Ways. Editor’s Note.<\/strong><\/p>\n

editor@artvilla.com
\nrobin@artvilla.com
\nwww.facebook.com\/PoetryLifeTimes
\nwww.facebook.com\/Artvilla.com<\/strong><\/p>\n

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    And the miners came down from the hills only once a month, to eat, drink, fight, if they were lucky, spend the night with a woman, instead of in jail. For sheriff Bennett met them at the edge of town and gave them the same warning each time: \u2018Have a good time, boys, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,43],"tags":[18,136,3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4335"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4344,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4335\/revisions\/4344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}