CARBON

If only the industrialists

could find it—the ore

within themselves—maybe

they wouldn’t have to kill canaries.

Maybe they wouldn’t be sending

miners into the depths of darkness,

into a place where the air is thick

as coal dust, where song

and a speck of color, feathered

like the sun, can’t possibly survive.

Maybe all they know, the industrialists,

is suffocation. Maybe they have no way

of getting to the diamond inside,

because their carbon keeps it caged.