A “thank you” goes out to poet Victor Depta, who sends “A poem,” he says, “in an effort to remind ourselves that the accident didn’t end with the weeklong news coverage.”
Montcoal
such an old grief
coming to us in the evening news
as if, across a gulf, an emptiness
in a place called West Virginia
was death again
where no roots are so deep
or mechanical or liable to maiming
as men are
delicately limbed—
that old grief again
predictable almost, in the newscasts
as a comfort of repetition
as ballads are
wherein women weep and wipe their tears
men mumble the inexpressible
and choke and look away
and everyone
old-fashioned as a quatrain
prays
in that old refrain
for men who grime themselves
underground
for a wife or a child
exposed there
in the stony chambers
to the explosion
bruised and burnt beyond breath
in the sudden yellow and orange blast
in Appalachia, in that age-old song
as if it were a ballad
about death
Victor M. Depta
Blair Mountain Press
Frankfort, KY
Irish poet Eamon Grennan to be at W.Va. Wesleyan on Thursday, April 22, 2010. 
A good friend of Nancy’s and mine, Jane Garnett, said today: “Do young people appreciate poetry these days? I find my Girl Scouts have never heard of classic poems like “Casey at the Bat”….
Subscribe to Mountain Word