Stephen Lefebure

Hagan, New Mexico 

Thinking only that it might be fun
To drive a road that looks more like a trail, 
You chose a track so rough and overgrown 
You had to take its inclines at a run,
And often you believed that you would fail 
And bottom out your vehicle on stone.
In getting somewhat lost you had begun 
To measure distance by another scale – 
When you had had enough of the unknown 
You came upon this town where everyone 
Was gone, a set of ponderous but frail 
Adobe ruins crumbling alone. 

A hundred people may have lived here when 
These buildings were constructed out of dream. 
You found the remnants of a station where
The railroad brought in women and strong men, 
Many from the East, propelled by steam 
To work here in this desert-mountain air.
This must have been a different landscape then, 
Before the car or airplane, an extreme
Distance even for the train to fare.
You almost hear its whistle, as again
It chugs into the station, a supreme
Effort consummated getting there. 

Perhaps they were surprised to see this sky 
More beautiful than anything they knew. 
They came to mine the coal seam just below 
The surface, an unusually high 
Quality of anthracite and blue
Bituminous that stood out in the snow
And still affords a generous supply.
From time to time – I swear that this is true – 
Wisps of smoke arise like wraiths to show 
That the coal still burns and will not die. 
Places like this rise and follow you;
You do not quite depart them when you go. 

Task yourself a little to descry
This area before it was bereft:
Men attempting grimly to control
The auger, children culling crop nearby, 
Boodling broken shale along this cleft. 
Observe those women washing heavy coal 
With slurry, smell the pungent alkali.
If you are sympathetic, weigh the heft 
Of feelings they compacted to a whole. 
This is what we burn for heat, thereby 
Enduring until there is nothing left
But butt cleat cinder lignite in our soul.
 
Now that distances are so much less,
Is nearness too, like distance, in the past? 
Does being near require something far? 
We occupy a place, but we possess 
Nothing of its presence, of the vast 
Spaces it inhabits like a star.
Arriving as we do, we cannot guess
How it felt to stand here when the last 
Ton of coal left in a railroad car,
How even as they left they nonetheless 
Failed to separate their own amassed 
Rootedness without a jagged scar.