from Kentucky

Here's a poem/meditation that I was working on during my trip to Kentucky. I think it's the best distillation I can do, but it leaves out so much.

Untitled (Kentucky and California)

What if a miner coughed every time I switched on a light?
Or three drops of coal ash sludge oozed out of the electrical
socket every time I turned on my computer?
What if I lost one increment of hearing every time I judged
“those people” as uneducated because of the accent in their voice?
Then I might begin to know the cost of living in my world.

Or would I learn that a cough is the sound of a light switching on,
And learn to live with poison and cancer?
Would I simply adjust to hearing no voice but my own?

The cloth was started before we are born.
The future is woven before we can see the pattern.
God is somehow embroidered here and there,
And the answer to our prayers is the touch of thread across thread.