When only a boy in northern Minn

February 7, 1972  (I was 27)

When only a boy in northern Minn

I first climbed through the barbed wire

edged up to an iron ore pit for a look

Later at the Grand Canyon I thought

Yeah but a man didn’t dig it

Down deep my pit had groaning trucks

red lakes prehistoric cranes spiral roads

and the myth books in school had pictures

Zeus looking down on the Greeks

Later it was Dante’s hole

or like a shot out of 2001

Anyway from the beginning it impressed me

and I grew to climbing around in it

Depths of it were un-worked and abandoned

You could walk miles on the bottom

stupidly swim or skate its lakes

There were also hell holes

deep drill test wells wide as a kid

It made you feel the world was hollow

to lay at the lip of one and drop rocks down

They clonged donged echo prolonged

down until you could hear them no more

diminished sound of a small gong

When mine cops came you’d have to run

dodging the unmarked holes a sweet terror

compared now to the acrid pitfalls of surface life