Ashley, Pennsylvania

Ashley, Pennsylvania

All is stolen away,
yet tattered lives remain,
in the shadows cast
by
grey decay.

That city's raped & scarred mistress,
to which the land & people
give their woe stricken lives.
Slag heaps & garbage streets,
drained veins too vast to reclaim
feel of darkest winter.

That
grey decay
o'er the forgotten borough,
an ald & worn tombstone,
where names & stories
have all but faded away.

Runs forth,
the rust streams,
flowing toward their oblivion,
Through our desolate,
black Martian Pennsylvania.

Their nakedness never
to be covered by lush
fertile green, nor
tangled with savior
white birch.

Veins madly pumping,
the singing of the
pick-axe;
only resonating echoes in the
old, worn-out miner's mind.

-Steve Bryant 2009