Read in the paper today about
new power plants opening.
They will be all over the country
to give us juice
for our lights.
Clean coal will be burned
and it will be green,
they say.
Does this green coal come
from a different mine
than the coal I could smell burning
on a cold winter morn?
And is this green coalmine
so clean that Mr. Newkirk's
black lung and morning cough
will not happen to miners anymore?
I assume dusting off
half an inch of coal dust
from windowsills is a thing of the past,
now that coal is green.
I also hear tell that
green coal will not cave in on miners
as it did on my grandfather.
Now who was the paper quoting?
Surly not the mine owners.
If so, I strongly question the source,
because I remember Ludlow.
And I remember John L. Lewis.
And I remember the 1917
coal dust explosion
at the Hastings mine.
I know coal very well.
Coal may now be green
to the mine owners.
They may be able to convince legislators
they so richly court.
But to me coal is dusty black.
It makes black smoke and stinks.
And saying coal is green
does not make some hearts any less black.
Doug Minnis
August 28,2009