WITH MOUTHS WIDE OPEN, NEW AND SELECTED POEMS
By John Caddy
Cornish-American poet is a bard of the Cornish Gorseth and in his latest book includes one poem on his grt-grandfather Coad.
From the section entitled, "The color of Mesabi bones," which deals with the Northern Minnesota mining region where Cornishmen landed. "Great-grandfather Coad went into the mine at six years of age.
Stretching his thin legs to reach iron rungs a full foot apart.
Apprenticed to his dad, listening to the ore carts' wheels rolling echoes up and down the hollowed fossil sea.
Grt-grandfather Coad, as the poem goes on, is orphaned at the age of nine and smuggles himself into an American bound ship in the cargo hold and the poem ends:
Boyman, a miner, missing the pasties his mother would tuck into his shirt.
Fingering the threads where she patched it.
A miner born, or made, stowaway.
What could his children expect?
What would they grow at the other end of this sea?
Card covers, 6x8, 330 pages, $18.
