There was only the narrow alley between us
and we lived beside the long dusty patch
of high ragweed that first parched summer
and then the heart leaves of the old poplar cradled
down to the dust in the fall when the men gathered there
of an evening to toss quoits into the sky
toward the clay pits facing them and in winter
the drifted snow showed where the wind whirled
between the houses and I watched the sun go down
out beyond there behind the mountain
and the moon sailing over the lot late at night
when I woke out of a dream of flying
and yet there was no way to imagine that place
as it had been for so long
with the world to itself before there were houses
when bears took their time there under trees they knew
now we were told that it belonged to
the D&H Coal Company and they
would do nothing with it but keep it
in case they ever should need to sink
an emergency shaft to miners
in trouble below there nobody could say
how far down but sometimes when the night
was utterly still we knew we had just heard
the muffled thump of a blast under us
and the house knew it the windows trembled
we listened for picks ticking in the dark