~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Ronnie Sirmans

What’s Been Lost

With flourishes from the president’s pen,

we are told the coal jobs will come back.

As if we were ignorant children standing

at the photo op with our dirty fingernails

tucked into the pockets of clean khakis,

naysayers later will act as if they’re pulling

back the curtain to reveal that automation,

not the avalanching strata of regulations

now wiped out with a bold signature,

will be what strangles our livelihood.

I would bet some of the critics and

their kin had to hang bedsheets too

across their windows to make do.

Even if just a few jobs come back,

then some families can put more food

on the table, buy some more clothes

for the kids. How can we refuse jobs,

even what few there are? We know

they cannot all come back. We saw

the earth-eating machines up close,

know explosives are faster than hands.

So many still desire what’s been lost.

Would not a lot of folks celebrate

if even just a few Carolina parakeets

flew again across smoggy skies?

What if some dodos waddled back

or if passenger pigeons took wing?

So can’t we embrace miners, roustabouts,

even the profession’s sewer pipe cleaners,

amid those dwindling numbers catalogued?

We keep pushing forward in the dark, listening

for a bird; an ordinary canary sounds as sweet

as a Carolina parakeet for saving your life.

Ronnie Sirmans, a digital platforms editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has had poetry published in The Georgia Review, Tar River Poetry, The South Carolina Review, Plainsongs, and elsewhere.