Mining...it works for Nevada.

Mining industry slogan

He looked down at the weed, a strong,

stiff spear of bristled green

crowned brilliant with lavender,

growing unabated at the tailing’s base,

amid the crushed rock souped once

in chemical baths for bright blue copper.

New leachers come again to work the rock

carcasses, shovel the piles apart, crush

larger rock into smaller, heap leach the bones

with sulfuric acids to get the last profit

out of the earth before it is discarded again.

And aerial spraying, sulfuric odor

acrid as on a drive through Hell,

the residents below the last reef of ore

suddenly come with asthma, with nose bleeds,

and the sprayers...shush, shush, shush

as if fighting for breath themselves...or truth.

There are those who know which Technicolor mounds

are not bottomed with the thick black plastic

to protect the groundwater, and those who know

where the company has dumped its accidental spills.

Look there, where the chemicals seep like hot springs

from the tailings, yellow and brown pus running

above the leach pond, dried orange rust that blows

before any good wind, and there is always wind.

We have come to this benign pile in quest of blue

veined rock, and to be careful...of thistles.

by Bill Cowee