The Photograph

There are two versions of this poem - the draft (at the bottom) has been around a while and then I rewrote it after a workshop in Derby with Jamie Thrasivoulou where he asked us to take a poem and alter it in style, use different words and even maybe in meaning.

I'm not sure which I prefer so I've put both of them here.

Diseases of the lung continue to affect ex-miners to this day and of course are still a major problem in the remaining mines around the world.

The Photograph

The man she looked at in the frame
Looked back, half-smiling on that day
Dressed up in his best suit and tie
with his new bride, perhaps a little coy,
They seemed so very far away

So many years spent down that hole
Grafting for their daily bread
Out of the local school on Friday
Descending in the cage on Monday
An ale or two his reward (he said)

Loose forward for the village team
No opponent gave him fear
The bigger they came, the harder he hit
Didn't want paying, preferred the pit
And liked to share a post-match beer

The child, when it came, was a boy
Looked exactly like his dad
"He's not doin' what I did,
he's got your brains, not mine!"
And he was right, he had.

Little David never went below
He was sensitive, smart and shy
The miner was proud when he saw his lad
But he never let him see his dad
With a salty tear in his rheumy eye

The last strike came as a bitter blow
It was brutal, it was hard
He stuck it out a full year and more
He watched his village split to the core
But he never betrayed his Union card

One day she said "You OK love?
You're struggling with that cough;
You don't seem right to me at all."
He grunted back "I''ll be raight,
Better weather'll see it off "

But it wasn't right, not at all
Those tiny specks of colliery dust
Had seeped into his inner soul
Had shrunk the big man down in size
His body and his spirit crushed

His hand and hers as he passed away
Clasped together with unspoken love
She only saw it in his eyes
As they closed for that final time
She hoped that they'd meet again above

His work was what had defined him
The colliery was part of his life
But it took it from her cruelly short
The damn photograph was no comfort;
it was just a young man and his wife.

The Photograph (draft)

She gazed at the photograph;
in the frame, in her hands
A young man and his wife;
smiling, barely recognisable
in their post-war Sunday best

A strong man who worked at the face
for so many years,
straight from school, 
to feed his wife and son
and to have the odd beer (or six)

He loved his rugby
he could have been a pro
they said he preferred the village team;
hard as nails and liked a scrap
then shook hands in the bar

"No son of mine" he'd said
"Is goin' down that pit"
And he didn't
he went down to Oxford
A rare tear glimpsed in the collier's eye
at his boy's ceremony

First out and last back in '84
when times were hard
they fought and defied
they stuck it out to the bitter end
Aye, the bitter end.

Then came the cough
the lack of breath
She could hear him wheezing
in the night
While she lay awake

It wasn't quick, it wasn't nice
the rugged man brought to his knees
his skin almost translucent at the end
her eyes wet and his closed
as they held each others' hands

Coal gave him pride
Its dust took it away
As time ticks by she feels
the wrenching void as she recalls
the man in the photograph