Detritus

A
bin liner bag,
clothes
of a dead man,
a watch
still ticking
darned socks
grey pants a
snake belt.

I collected it-
father-
two days dead
and noticed
behind,
thirty others
bags,
all in rows
other dead
other bags.

Rain in Aberfan.

We peel the caterpillars
from Poplar trees,
gather frozen cobwebs
this frosty morn

only eight years
old the fates
already formulated
on roads of destiny.

Rain falls across
the empty playground
childless now-
a screaming silence.

Shadows of mums and dads
stall, unrecoverable,
wasting a few more hours
a few more days.

Shelly.

You could never
forget Shelly,
with his be-bop-a-lu-la
- Gene Vincent at
six o’clock on
the manrider
train.

The flume of baccy
juice at his feet,
an act to the management,
“not too close
sunshine”,
"don’t step on my
men."

Brothers underground -
carrying Tommy Collier
out the pit twice in a
week.
A camaraderie
I grieve to have
lost.

I wish I could have
spoken to him
in those last days,
joking
in his wheelchair,
running the nurses
ragged at 63.

I could have told him:
thanks for
pointing me the
right way,
thanks for the humility
the grace and honesty
of a real man -
for your hand at
my weakest time,
for your
truth
Shelly -
for a friendship
hewn in
Anthracite.


Now
the tools
all rodded up,
your snap box empty,
water gone.
Rest now mucca,
the ratch is won.





For Mick Sheldon, my mucca.
Passed away 2005.

Note: a ratch was 10 yards of coal blasted and hand filled by one man during his shift. roughly 10 ton of coal.

Gestures

Her words like
antique ink
sunken into vellum
read a million
times - sunk into me.

Fold lines that fold
themselves
like hinges - a door
to memories
of us -
words dancing
across the
meadow of her
page
the riches of
other days.

Be careful how you
open her
the toughness - the
moxie a
masquerade she
kills with
miniscule gestures.