Before renting our property, you should know
about the mining shaft in the backyard
behind the trellis with grape vines.
It’s a beautiful thing, the shaft, but you’ve got to know.
There’s a pulley beside it, the wheel
clogged with a generation of sand. The beam
of the pulley is splintered all the way down,
then damp and grainy where it pegs into the ground.
You should lean over the pit, when you arrive,
pinch the fold of skin at your neck,
then spread apart your restless feet and hands
as you look into the depths. You’re not going to fall in.
You can see hard water residue all over the nails.
There’s a chain. It hangs from the pulley. It clangs in the night.
Where a link once broke, it has since been mended
with thick coiled wire, teased at the end like a doll’s braid.
You should stand by the pit until you have to lean
forward to get the achy rush in your hands and feet.
In a while you’ll have to lean in farther.
We don’t advertise it—the shaft, I mean—
we don’t want the liability,
but this is what keeps us alive at the end of the day.
Nail heads as thick as your thumb,
wood as rough as your chapped lips. The chain
is rusted all the way down, the dirt as old
as crumbling honey. You’re not going to fall in,
unless you step too close,
which, of course, you shouldn’t.
Evening can last all winter these days,
and your shadow on the weeds, you know,
will pry open a primrose more gently than the moon.

Alizabeth Worley lives in Utah with her husband and two little ones near Brigham Young University, where she received an MFA. She was a poetry winner of the 2016 AWP Intro Journals Project, and her poetry, essays, and illustrated works have appeared or are forthcoming in Tar River Poetry, Grist, Hobart, and elsewhere. You can find more of her work at alizabethworley.com.