He Wasn’t There

A miner’s voice from the deep drift of silence and love

Deep Lead
(for Maurice McCarthy)

It’s so dark.
Finding my way out—
I knew you’d find my dreams.
They rise up with the lightning
that searches for my love.

It’s quiet.
Deathly quiet.
And still I knew
I’d find my way to this song.
It took a hundred years.

You see, I was lost in the deep drift,
up from the north drive—
fortified wood for bones,
rough diamonds for eyes.

Down here with the pit ponies,
rusted carts and timber boxes,
cold water rising,
lapping at my boots—
sailing me slowly to hell.

My friend spent a year down a Cornish coal mine,
picking the face under Thunder Bay—
he could hear waves
on the other side of the wall,
daring him to die.

I told him I’d never seen the ocean—
couldn’t swim either.

But I made it out,
up from the deep lead,
with gold-washed wages
for my young family.

Your mother, my Annie, died broken-hearted,
a candle lit each night in her window
for your long-lost father—
who vanished down a dark road.

I feel I’m on the same road—
foggy, familiar.

She swore he’d come back.
Swore it till the end.
But he wasn’t there.
And neither might I be.

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Note on the poem.

My great-great-grandfather, Maurice McCarthy, worked the deep lead mines of central Victoria. In this imagined voice, part monologue, part farewell. I’ve tried to listen for what he might have said to his wife Annie in the final days of his working life, perhaps already sick, certainly already burdened.

This poem is a descent, but it’s also a reckoning with silence. His own, hers, and the silences they both inherited. A road down. A road remembered. A voice rising back toward the light.

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Two miners working.

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Note on the history:

If you are interested in learning more about deep lead gold mining Buried Rivers of Gold is an excellent website. Basically the miner dug hundreds, even thousands of feet down to the bedrock below and ancient goldbearing river, often hidden under an old lava flow. They would tunnel through the bedrock and come up under the gravel ‘drift’ that held the ‘paydirt’. The drift was often full of slow moving underground water, that would flood the mine if it wasn’t contained properly. The miners would basically build cages of timber to keep out the water so they could remove the gold bearing gravel or ‘wash’. On the surface amazingly large steam engines and pumps would be working to pump out water also. The gravel was taken down to the drive below and taken out to the main shaft in steel trolleys on a tramway. Trolleys were then hoisted up the main shaft in a cage. The digging of the drive through the bedrock required dynamite and drills. The gravel removal took vast amounts of timber lining of the gravel drift, that would be moved along. They often had horses living down in the mine called pit ponies. The mining expertise often came from Cornish miners who had previously worked in Cornwall in similiar conditions tin mining.

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This poem is a part of a series. Mine as Metaphor. Catch up on the other three posts below.