Despair
Trapped under tons of rock
How did they pass those 17 days,
A brotherhood of men
lost like a child’s shoe in the sand?
Rationing a morsel of food and water
for who knew how long
fate as uncertain as the stale air
and then another seventy days
of darkness and despair.

Freedom
The gradual progress of the drill
and all the careful calculations
before the flimsy cage,  
Encapsulated in a tube of rock,
a miracle of engineering,
determination and daring,
birth canal, difficult and painstaking,
a tunnel towards the light of freedom.

Faith
The prayer of a voice
from the depths of the desert,
A scrap of paper
Waved like a banner of life,
A freed miner kneeling,
resisting  for a moment
the magnet of family.
to give thanks in faith.

Joy*
The raw emotion
ore from the womb of the earth
the intensity of pain and joy
in the faces of the children  
as their fathers returned from the tomb;
a world waiting in the glare of hope
a world for once joined in joy.