Evergreen Cemetery October 2016 – A Poem by Phil Woods

Leadville from the Emmet Mine, looking west.

EVERGREEN CEMETERY OCTOBER 2016

On Saturday we remembered

Irish miners buried
In a nearby meadow. Pines

growing among their sunken

outlines. Average age, twenty-three.

Most nameless. No marker.

A tiny wooden one empty

after years of rain & snow.

Worked like ants in high

mountain tunnels. Many

from played out copper

region of southwest Ireland.

This day warm enough for

short sleeves. Pleasant.

This morning Leadville

reported a low of fourteen.

That’s what it would have

been like back then.

These old sharp & rounded

peaks have seen it all.

You have to stay in silence

with them to hear

their prayers.

“Finntown” remains; possibly what was a sauna, a part of the small community of Finnish miners who lived among the Aspens by the Emmet mine in the 1880s, 1890s

_________

(photos by Rob Prince)