On Wall Street in Millfield, the double-wides
fade in weather and dust and memories,
a half mile from the mine with its chimney
and tipple veiled by mist. Eighty-two
wander under Sunday Creek, below 5th Avenue
and Main, below broken brick buildings,
the company store, under the bosses’ houses
with dormers and bays and iron fences
now gone or snarled in weeds.
They went down too that day: shaking hands,
inspecting beams, asking questions.
In Millfield, children play on slides and swings,
laughing and dancing over the catacombs:
remainders of dreams lost in Sunday Creek Valley,
the empty shelves of Empire builders, rusted rails
and cars half full of black diamonds,
relics of a forgotten world, gardens without roots,
holes where treasures might be.
—
John Aylesworth teaches learning disabled children in Southeastern Ohio. He earned an M.A. in Creative Writing and a PhD. in Comparative Arts from Ohio University and stayed in the area after graduation. He, his wife, and two dogs and a cat live in the Hocking River Valley between two ridges
