Poems by Kentucky Governor's Scholars

This summer KFTC took a group of students from Kentucky's Governor's Scholars Program to visit mountaintop removal sites and to meet with members of coalfield communities.  Afterwards, some of the students wrote poems reflecting on their experiences. 

The following are poems by two of the students:

A Blackheart
Dark stone rests beneath the peaks,
Waiting for its time to be carved with pick and sledge.
Anticipating the warmth of sunlight,
And the infernoof the forge.

Uncovered, its value is found in the making of men.
Unveiled, the soot of the earth is now coveted.
Unleashed, it burns bright, bringing energy and light to the human race.

Awe and reverence become jaded by the working of time,
Exchanged for an endless hunger, lustful for the power of Coal.
Jagged spades and skewers of steel pick up the pace, 
Eagerly biting into earth, rock, and verdant wood.

Great mountains crumble beneath crashes of flame, 
And the valleys fare stopped with cadavers of once fertile land.  
Dark, noxious pools wait silently on the slopes,
Poised to bring death to the living below.

In the quest for the dark stone,
Our thirst for power been quenched with blood.
Hands stained crimson, some begin to perceive the calamity before us.

Entire forests swept away,
Soil reduced to fruitless sand,
Species struggle to survive the onslaught on their land,
While our desired mineral becomes ever more ephemeral.

Excavation turned to evisceration, 
Nature is ravaged like a spoil of some evil war.
It is up to our race—our generation—to right the course,
To repent our crimes, to seek new light-bringers, and to give back unto Gaia.

Now is the time to act, 
Before we find our world and our hearts tainted,
As black as the ashen Coal under the mountains.

Philip Houtz
7/19/07
Winchester

Appalachian Memories
An unexpected class.
Definitely not my first choice.
Unsure of its content.  Skeptical of its uses.

Bluegrass music.
Sweaty bus rides.
Eastern accents.
Hoedowns.
Forested hills.
It seemed so simplistic at first.
Then…the destruction of ignorance.

Blasted mountaintops.
Polluted streams.
Lakes of sludge.
Displaced people.
Loss.
Prejudice.
Censorship.

A class I didn’t want.
But…
One that opened my eyes.

Ali Proctor
GSP 2007
Louisville