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.