Into the Out-of

Desperate Miners
How black and blighted
How centered in the last cold pockets
How did it happen

More crawlers came from the north provinces
They heard the satellite transmissions
The cells spat out the news and
they came

Fathers and brothers
Fellows and scholars
Deep searchers
Come to search

Their heavy and lumbering machines took them mile after mile
They sat and ate cold and hard biscuits as rations
They conserved their water
knowing there may not be enough of it clean enough for consumption upon arrival
They laughed together and traced lines in one another's faces to the soft red and blue lights of their instruments
They laughed

A hard shout down the shaft their brethren sat
Thinking of their lungs
and how to fill them against the crush of giving up
They finished the last of their rations hours ago
They sat and did not laugh and grimaced to think of water
fit to drink
And they had none

So they sat in the day's night
Dawn came above and did not shine below
And mothers and sons and daughters wept at the barricades

The crawlers came
but they were too tired to cheer, the onlookers
Where a glimmer came from the dust and soot
Factories and the betterment of their lives stood over them
still at work
uncaring

A plan came and the iron machines came to a point
they converged at the problem's heart and pulverized the ground
They shook the roots of the industrial town's grey giants
But no response came

"We heard them above, not knowing the way of things", the one survivor spoke as they pulled him from the ground
and mothers and sons and daughters fell to their knees or wept into one anothers clothes
Threadbare mourners collapsing into each other
A galaxy or 300 spinning into and onto themselves
But she stood there and didn't care
She saw only the one she loved
Black and blighted
Crippled enough from the damp and closed confines of earth
and spoke his name