This, you could count on-

that the church bell every quarter hour meters out

Day and night.

Singing metal claimed from

within the sheltering hills around town

By men, poor and plain, with nothing

but the sigh of a light

the size of a matchbox,

Three hundred years ago.

How did they find what they were looking for?

How did they trace the lineage of iron,

surrounded by darkness,

prostate in Stollen

only four feet high?

And how did they go on

when the hills remained silent,

a gaping tease of their longing

to strike a red vein?

It was the bell that called the miner’s assembly.

It had to take form.

Earth turned to ringing sound

Up high, untethered.