My Grandfather

A miner from a boy
Wearing his scratched helmet
Climbing in the cage
Ropes of steel
Tonnes of metal zooming him down, down, down
To the pit of darkness

Ending the shift
Riding up the shaft
Blinking at bright sunshine.

Plunging again into a different darkness
Of trenches, madness and shell holes……..
Surviving this, returning to the pits.

No longer a boy.

Now an old man
Wheezing emphysema
Sucking cannel coal.
Remembering his comrades.

JE Holden

JE Holden says

I wrote the attached poem in memory of my grandfather Joseph Meadowcroft. He fought in WW1 and survived the trenches. He returned home to the pits in Haydock Lancashire in the North of England and died young from emphysema.