Light at the Seam by Joseph Bathanti.

The seam in the title is the coal seam. Sunlight streams onto the coal seam only when the layers of soil and rock are scraped off of it by heavy machinery in the ominous process of Mountain Top Removal mining that makes retrieving the coal to sell it not only cheaper, but also more damaging to the environment and people nearby who are assaulted by the desecration of the land, the water and the air. Half of these poems were inspired directly by Carl Galie’s photographic exhibition, Lost on the Road to Oblivion: The Vanishing Beauty of Coal Country. “Joseph Bathanti’s eco-poems simultaneously praise the intricate beauty of Creation and rage against the coal industry’s destruction of Appalachian mountains and Appalachian lives. His sacramental vision, his witness, along with his compression of sound and sense, are akin to the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Lamenting the felling of Binsey poplars, Hopkins cried out, ‘O if we but knew what we do. . . .’ But in this moment, we do know. Clima