Where The Pit Was

This is a follow-on from the 3 Miners' Sonnets that I published as a sequence earlier this year. I've had it in draft for a while.

I don't agree with the sentiments in this poem, but I understand them.

Shirebook Colliery - healeyhero.co.uk

Where the Pit Was

The village has changed in so many ways
where we hung around and played all our games
I cast my mind back to my childhood days
saw in my mind's eye two Meccano frames.

Where the Pit was a new monument stands
but not to the men who worked down the mine -
a symbol of all that's gone from our land,
an emblem of greed for slick modern times.

Minimum wage for overseas labour,
turn up at work more in hope than in cheer.
Can't understand your new foreign neighbour?
Don't worry they say - you've nothing to fear.

That work was hard but I want the Pit back!
This vote's my chance to give you lot the sack

Tim Fellows 2017