A Day Like Any Other

This is my second poem dedicated to the men who died and were seriously injured in the disaster at Markham Colliery in Derbyshire on July 30th 1973. They included Joseph (Joe) Birkin, who lived in our village and whose twin daughters Lynn and Sadie were regulars at our chapel and were only 21 when their dad died.

 A Day Like Any Other

It was a day like any other -
dawn's sunlight split the blue-black sky.
It glinted on the pit-head wheel
and lit the dusty roads in layers of gold.
Dreams escaped from sleeping heads
and drifted round silent rooms,
disturbed by gently ticking clocks
that marked the time before

the fractured metal, screaming rope
and broken hearts. The silence explodes.

A shattering of memories.

Tim Fellows 2018



Here's a link to the first one - Markham 1973

Full details are really well described here.