Dave Bonta's "Miners" is a short, compressed picture of coal miners coming up from underground. The first lines describe the "old coal hole" giving way to something "new and clean at 3:00 o'clock." It sounds like a shift ending, though the poem never says so outright. The word "clean" is striking, since coal work is anything but, so the line feels like a small, odd moment of relief or rebirth.
The second stanza turns darker and more puzzling. The colliers "see in the dark," as if their eyes have adapted to a life below ground. They "garden some ill wood," which suggests tending something sickly or unpromising, and they "believe in little." The speaker doesn't judge them. Instead the poem simply observes, in a flat, quiet voice.
The mood is austere and muted, with a trace of tenderness. Hope is there, but small and worn down, and the poem leaves much unexplained, so a reader has to fill in the gaps.