Morning Fix
Clyde Kessler
I grin when the earth fools me
in the ground where my kinfolk
mined coal, so I wouldn’t have to,
so I could escape their drudging
home and job. Their smiles look
like thin smudges, with such days
their quiet happiness real enough
to fly past me. One says don’t
divine anything from the silence,
or the words. Another just reheats
yesterday’s biscuits for my breakfast,
and leans back and helps me
be haunted, then free, then old.