End of Shift
This is my digging hand
at those exhausted seams
turned dust to dust
in my late soundless hour
to prop whatever up –
perhaps underpinnings
beneath presses of kilonewtons
into compressed layers
All this darkness was once painted –
as if in tar –
by a Welshman’s guided tour
through an exhausted mine –
it saw my hard-hat lamp-dim
and my eyesight drop
to where my father’s coughed up
black blood stuck – fool’s gold
Other dead men stand
in a wall-mounted photograph –
to tell of them and others who went to dig
at that hand-bared stuff
I will sit alone – propped by this revisiting hour
as my recall waits for sleep
to take me from my tunnelling
E241019
Thanks to Helen Ivory @nellivory for suggestions via National Writing Centre @WritersCentre