Hello, my friend. A tribute to fallen miners - 2019

Each year for the last several, I have written a poem as a tribute to our country's miners who were killed in the line of their important work. Below is the poem I presented at an industry conference honoring these people who died while making a living for themselves and their families.

Mining is an important industry to our country and way of life. If it wasn't grown, it was mined. Mining used to be one of the most dangerous occupations around, but now it is one of the safest.

However, one death is too many.

In honor of those who were taken too soon, I offer these humble words.


"We Lost You Too Soon"
by Terry L. Tyson

Hello my friend.
We’ve never met, but
I know you.


Our paths never crossed
Our eyes never met
But you knew me, too.


We worked in a job
That built cities
Where you and I live.


A job that built
a country and to a people
Our sweat we would give.


We lost you too soon
Your family and friends
Will always wonder why.


We gather to seek a way
To stop death and pain
Giving us reason to cry.


We honor you today
My brother, my distant friend
Whom I’ve never met.


We honor you today
A humble gesture
And know we shall never forget.

Atumanal Poem #4 - November Night Rain

Cool evening walks in the autumn rains bring a washing away of the year before. All growth is ceased but only to begin again after slumber and contemplation of the winter.  The smells of a rain in the fall are different than those in the spring or summer. Not unpleasant, but more earthy and basic.

Another bad poem for Autumn.

November Night Rain

Promising puddles, only teasing snow

Dark night autumnal rain,
An artist
Creating a collage show.

Of wet leaves, layers of sycamore leaf

Across concrete walks and roads
And grass
Silent sighs, a final dying grief.

Street lights are a sun streak
From a different world
Where dark
Is light and warmth bleak.

Hidden earth smells arise, surround me

In still air that moves like
Miasmic
Phantoms of lost moments, I can no longer see.

Shedding the old and embracing true

The new wonders that
Still slumber
Awakened only when I see you.

Autumnal Poem #3 - The Coming Sleep

Autumn is a time of introspection and of transition. All that has happened before is drawn close and allowed to rest to be renewed with Spring. Ideas, feelings and activity are germinated and brought forth again, perhaps changed but always welcomed anew.

I repeat myself often when I say it is my favorite of seasons. It is never a dark night of the soul, but the long night of dreams and true appreciation for what is and the building of what will be.

After a long walk with a blind dog, I watched children running through leaves, carefully raked by fathers and mothers as they laughed at the spreading colors and groaned when called in well before dinner was ready.  The trees seemed to talk as the wind blew the soon-to-be naked branches. There is a smell to the season that is quite pleasing. It smells like change.

It made me smile and be grateful for the autumns that have been and the seasons to come.

The Coming Sleep
Trees chatter to another
Among laughter beneath limbs
Baring their hidden reach.

Children, tall in their long shadows,

Run to spray orange, red and gray
Leaves gathered to reveal dying grass yellow.

Faces glistening in cloudless sky

Playing in coats, too warm for the sun
Too cold to shed.

Night comes before the last bird call

As the world remembers the coming
Of deep cold and deep sleep.

And in the growing silence

There is the faith and trust
That this is but a fleeting time.

Warm embraces from without

And within are but a season away
When long shadows give way to Spring.