By Skyler Lambert
O’ Stonecoal Creek, precious stream of the Besoco hills, how you carry generations of sweat and blood and coal dust, the toil of men who dug these mountains inside out. How you hold the tears of hill women who watched their husbands and sons and grandsons and brothers go underground to die; you, Stonecoal, are the wives and mothers and grandmothers and sisters, the steady hands that cook and care and pray too much. With every mountaintop blown to shreds, every mine excavated, every death, you, Stonecoal, keep churning.
O’ Stonecoal Creek, you were there, ebbing next to my father as his life expired, your murmur rocking him to forever sleep. Did you feel his heart aching on your banks? Did his final breaths rise on the winds above you? Was his spirit carried away in your trickling touch?
Skyler Lambert grew up in the coal camp of Besoco, West Virginia. His writing is published or forthcoming in Appalachian Journal, riverSedge, Meat for Tea, and Hedge Apple. Skyler serves on the board of a community arts incubator and shares a home with his partner and three pets.