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.

Entangled in you
your eyes your
head entangled
in you

Entangled in you
your arms your legs
your mind your
bed
entangled in you.

Every Road.

Every road

inclined

as weighted

days and

weighted limbs

collide.

Children

scurry through

his minds as bright

as the morning

sun.

Eyes of piercing

certainty

truth and grace

embrace these

last scenes

and hold them in his

mind like

luke warm

wine.

The Cement Garden.

A warm incestuous writhe

of bramble and honeysuckle,

the sweet decay a funeral cologne.

I taste your marzipan breath

yet suffocate waiting for your eyes

that stall and never reach me.

In your garden the rain sounds a

discord of our coupling – a gentle

trespass playing summer’s saddest

symphony.

Promises

We promised each other the little
things – for tomorrow.
Prayed for lottery wins
when first steps passed us by.
Baby laughs and chuckles from
some other room.

Days slipped by with death
around the corner – thoughts
that death was for the old
not for the young.

Waiting for the next pay
cheque - the next weekend -
anxiety scurrying through
minds like starlings trapped
in the loft.

We promised each other the little
things for tomorrow
while birds sang in other
trees - in other skies.