They Will Not Return - A Visual Poem

Today I am sharing a project that has been a long time in the making. A few years ago now, I wrote a poem and shared it here called “They Will Not Return.” I’ve read this poem aloud at various open mics over the years, which on one occasion led me to develop a friendship with a very interesting person that has become a story in itself, for another time. The narrative within this poem is not based on a true story, though it might as well be. It is however inspired by the pioneering work of the poet Muriel Rukeyser, who wrote a work that shifted the foundations of what I though poetry could do. Her classic work, The Book of the Dead, is a seminal text for what is known as documentary poetry. In the 1930s, Rukeyser travelled to West Virginia to interview workers and their family members who took part in digging the Hawks Nest Tunnel, a project that ultimately claimed the lives of over 700 hundred workers, making it the worst industrial accident in U.S. history. The workers were digging through silica, inhaling the tiny glass shards with little to no safety guards in place. Their resulting shredded lungs, a condition called silicosis, claimed their lives quickly. After much feet dragging and outright lying and bribery of doctors, Union Carbide was eventually forced to make small payments to the affected workers and their surviving families. In an act of legalized cruelty, in the days before the Civil Rights Act, the company’s payments were tiered based on the worker’s race, with predictably the black workers’ families receiving smaller payouts, their lives judged to be worth less than the white workers who they toiled and breathed beside. Tragically, many of the workers, most of whom were black immigrants from the Deep South and had no roots in West Virginia, were buried in unmarked pauper’s graves unbeknownst to their families. A cemetery exists today in their honor, tiny unnamed wooden crosses in sinking ground, ground which I hope to someday visit, with a sole woman volunteer serving as its caretaker.

Rukeyser’s Book of the Dead, along with Hubert Skidmore’s novel Hawk’s Nest about the disaster, comprise some of the only contemporaneous reports on the subject. The Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster remains little known today. As is so often the case, the first draft of history was the only draft.

After reading Rukeyser’s poem, I felt compelled to craft a similar story, though in much shorter form than hers. As I said, this poem is not based on any particular actual incident, but its basic contours continue to play out in our society time and time again. The train derailment and corporate-caused explosion in East Palestine, Ohio that poisoned an entire town is just one of many recent examples. Flint, Michigan, whose residents are still drinking poisoned water to this day due to a criminal cover-up by a Democratic Party administration, is another.

And besides those real-world inspirations, this poem is very meaningful to me on a personal level because, as with most things I write and create, it weaves in little details from my own life, my relationships, my thoughts, my feelings for the people I cared for. I’m happy with the way this short film version turned out (it’s never pre-planned what the end result will be), and I hope you will watch it and engage with its themes.

For this short film version I made for the poem, I asked a few collaborators to offer their talents in bringing the different voices in the poem to life. Here I thank them for their time and grace. Cash Costango, my best friend who I met while doing theatre (and we’re both still doing it these days), plays the part of John Macomb. Annie Murrell, an actor who I went to school with in the theater program at Southern Oregon University, plays the role of the Narrator. My friend Dena Paolilli plays the role of Em. And I voice Chairman Rickover, unnamed in the poem text but the film version needed a character name.

This film is dedicated to Mary Moss, the one who moved and was moved.

Thank you.