A setting of a remarkable poem by Sherry Fairchok, a Pennsylvania native, entitled "Ode to Coal." In her poem she evokes imagery of "an ancient frozen lake, a black stone palace, a mountain of buried night," relating a sentiment of loss, as the mines had looted from the mountains something gloriously prehistoric. Two folk tunes from the Pennsylvania mining regions are woven throughout the composition: "The Avondale Mine Disaster" and the hymn tune "Dunlap's Creek."