For Applicants to the Diggings

Before you think you have the courage
To grovel the tunnels to the earth,
Think if it’s worth the crouch and sludge
To make a friend or take a wife
Whom death or bad faith will unbind
From you at last. What is this life
But some old sieve God left behind
And found by us poor working classes
After the world ran out of gold,
Through which, for being dirt, there passes
Everything that we would hold?

–May 22, 1990

 (“For Applicants to the Diggings” appeared in the 2003 issue of The Listening Eye, Kent State University in Burton OH.)

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