Cobalt

Twenty kilometers south
They closed the factory 
In 1898

Cobalt

I knew it was the farm
As soon as I saw it
On my left
Even though the place didn’t 
Look like the photographs
From 1904

A switch flipped in my mind
I turned into the driveway
On automatic pilot

Cobalt

I don’t suppose my great-uncle
Would have ever worked 
In the cobalt factory
or the saw mill or the grain mill
Even if the mines 
and the factories hadn’t closed
Even if he, at age fifteen, 
Hadn’t left for america 
Along with a lot of other
Local teenagers holding
Tickets to board the Celtic.

He wasn’t the type to work in a mine.
Yet I still can’t find what he did 
For work between the ages 
Of fifteen and twenty-six
But eventually he did leave 
Us a rather extensive library.

Cobalt

When I drove out of the driveway
I knew I couldn’t look back
Too much traffic and a haunting feeling
My great great grandmother’s parting
To join her son and never return 
to her Norwegian home.

This poem was written during a trip to Norway when I visited the farm where my great great grandparents lived before they immigrated to America. I rented a car and just as I arrived at the nearest town to the farm, the navigation stopped working. I consulted my phone and drove in the direction that was most logical. After my visit with the current owner of the property, I went off to an old cobalt factory that wasn’t too far away. The cobalt factory was by a waterfall which had equally powered a saw mill and a grain mill. The process of producing the beautiful color of cobalt from mined ore/rocks for color pigmentation was lengthly and hazardous. This poem explores the unknown, the known and the things that happened and didn’t happen, things that haunt the family members who did or did not immigrate to America.