Squished between bottled memories are photo's depth
Fossils hold lastingness, enigmatic time
Explorer on coal fact-finding mission, yours and mine
Blackness of glassy lumps, tremendous breadth
At the old colliery, buried history, a coal town's death

Unbounded, far-reaching reminiscence of miner's lives
Great, great grandfathers incinerated citizenry
Existence not wasted, though no nostalgia cynically
Selling souls to company store per week for fives
Faith they measured by feeding children and wives

No way out from tombs of chiseled insignificance
Pick axes, shovels sounding klinks and klanks
Started his career at thirteen, some less in ranks
What  grandpa heard: cussing, dynamite dissonance
Sounds of ancestors buried in condition indigence