Black is not dark in a coalmine.

Black smells of graft and brass.

A job for hard, tough men;

coal dust under finger nails.

In the black these men sing

and voices fill the shadows.

We are a family, we miners.

This mine is our life blood.

 

Wife and children up top;

where they belong.

We are here for them.

They are our spur our reason.

After a shift, a shower, a smile.

Hot food and warm love waits.

Later the pub, beer and darts,

foot ball, on’t telly, laughter.

 

The mine waits but is not lonely.

Tomorrow the men will return.

They will always come back

to their mistress, the coal mine.

Machines yell a torrent of sound,

the clank of wheel on rail,

the chunter of chain and tooth,

the sounds of the cage.

 

Light springs from headlamps

and lanterns but loses its self

in the twists of galleries.

Light only shines in straight lines.

Men’s voices run like rivers

to go where they must go.

Voices push back the dark.

The fear is of silence.

 

Men work here.

Slashing at the coalface.

Men live and die here,

men, jobs, wages, families.

Men fought for these jobs.

Picket lines, a fence of people;

more money, better conditions,

pride, sometimes stupidity.

 

Economics stole these jobs.

Clean people calculated.

Deep ledgers bled.

Deep mines suffocated.

Yes it is dark in a coalmine,

when the mine music stops.

Shadows die and men have gone.

Only water speaks in the black

 

The jobs blown in a blast of hate,

small grimy homes left to molder.

Front door steps no longer shine –

wet after soap and scrubbing brush.

Bewildered small people bereft,

families broken by poverty.

Life, a shaft shadow, escaped

to wither in the cruel world of light.

 
 

David Garlick, Sidney, December, 2000