Calling the Mining Folk in Montana ~ Gatherings from Ireland # 327

I’m hearing that Butte, Montana, the place to which so many of the miners of the Copper Coast here in Co. Waterford emigrated  in the late nineteenth century, is freezing and snow-bound.

This very recent photograph of the the cliffs across from the mine-works at Tankardstown is especially for you:

Tankardstown, Co. Waterford.

And I would also like to bring you a poem from Leanne O’Sullivan’s wonderful collection The Mining Road (2013) which was inspired by the disused copper mines near Allihies in Co. Cork ~ mines to which some of the Bonmahon miners went before heading for Butte.

Ascent

Perhaps this is why

I keep returning –

the dark

always ascending

and the light

retreating softly

beyond the shaft.

At nightfall

the engine hauls

you back

in ones and twos,

up past

the darkened galleries,

the sunk

knowledge

and wet quartz

blasted

and glittering among

the constellations –

starlight,

your own name

called out,

your hands entering

the world again.

( from: Leanne O’Sullivan(2013) The Mining Works, Bloodaxe Books)