Beneath the stucco fence

 Beneath the stucco fence 

John Clare Stokes

In innocence where once they leaned

to steal their first kiss deep beneath

their feet a rumbling earth gave rise to

coal to warm the homes upon the steep

holler steps the old Orander buses rusting

beside the narrow road that carried the

fathers and the brothers far within the

Crumpler mountains returning to the shrill

whistle of  miners shifts ending,  unrecognizable covered in coal dust

a mass of one shuffling men all laboring

below while above in white snow lingered

two near the stucco fence that kept them

separated daring never to cross for 

Ethel saw it all from her upstairs room

the daily coming and the going of who

was returning from Northfork and who was

going to Bluefield even down to hearing

the soft purring in the cellar dank, lapping

the milk stolen from the ice box while

Ethel ironed the bus mans clothes over

looking the first generation of the Italian

family in search of a dream within the

coal seams and steal perchance their

own first kiss to start a family living in

the yellow company home and if by hard

labor they gathered enough script they

too could move up the Mountain into a

house of blue where from their up stairs

windows they could count the coming and

the going who was meeting who by the

yellow stucco fences below to steal their

daughters away, far away from the 

separation of their fences, of the

rumblings deep beneath their trembling feet.

The entrance to my mother’s childhood home in Crumpler, West Virginia. Mamma told of her first beau, a young Italian lad.