Poetry feature: The Waiting Miner

A chest up for it, with broad steel beam  

Shoulders, eyes searching for some good 

Breath at the coalface. 

Wraiths that were young fellas. 

Hands that got bent into 

No good blunt tools.  

Carving out a contour in time.  

This door, this shiny mirror  

precious stuff that makes the world spin 

Crudeness that we mistake for energy  

A hundred hands, a thousand flashes 

Down there, where labour is squeezed like an udder.  

Bright snippets, slicing in and out from a skylight  

For those seen by none.  

I saw them on a Channel 4 reel 

They grinned and sighed, like the Fool  

Left frozen for no good or fault of their own, 

Made to be a coddling jester for 

old, mad bosses 

stuck in a storm still.