The Slag Heap

He’d never forgotten the heap of slag

That sat beside the mine,

It blocked the sun from his morning walk

With its shadow, so sublime,

It grew to hover above his home

From the time that he was three,

Its overpowering vastness grew

Not slow, but steadily.

And every time that the wind would blow

Its dust would fill the air,

Would saturate every cranny, even

Darken his mother’s hair,

The coal dust strangled their garden bed

So not a thing would grow,

And filled up his father’s lungs with dust

Each time that he went below.

The more that they mined the deeper coal

The higher it grew, the heap,

It spread away from the poppethead

Was covering up the street,

They tried to manage the monster but

It grew out of control,

With every truckload of slag they dumped

From where they mined the coal.

At night it loomed like a giant bat

With its shadow on the ground,

Gleaming black in the moon’s pale beam

It terrorised the town,

‘I don’t like walking at night out there,’

You’d hear the women say,

‘That heap is covering Satan’s lair

We need to get away.’

But nobody ever got away,

At least, not with their soul,

They’d sold their souls to the devil, and

Were tied to the monster, coal,

The men came home with their faces black

And their hands all scarred and torn,

For coal mining is the sort of job

You are cursed with, when you’re born.

And he was taken to work the mine

When he’d barely turned just six,

His father said, ‘Well, I think it’s time,

You can leave behind your tricks,’

They showed him how he could work the fan

To fill the mine with air,

And there he worked twelve hours a day

While he learned the word ‘Despair’.

His father died when a prop collapsed

And they had to leave him there,

Under a hundred tons of coal

But the owners didn’t care,

They simply began another drive

To make up the owner’s loss,

Whether the miners lived or died

Their lives were seen as dross.

So Andrew, that was the orphan’s name

Went down between the shifts,

He took some fuel and matches down

He’d long been planning this,

He managed to start a coal seam fire

That roared by the morning sun,

And smoke poured out of that poppethead,

While they raged, ‘What has he done?’

But Andrew never emerged again

To pay for the thing he’d done,

He’d told his sister to write a note,

‘I did it for everyone!’

His bones lie charred where his father fell,

Under a hundred ton,

They couldn’t put out the coal seam fire,

The father lies with the son.

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Avinash]

It was heartrending to see both father and son meeting the same eventuality. But few things are destined to happen and people do not have much say in the way events unfold. Not even a seasoned writer like your self can change the story which follows the path of destiny.

[Jane Winters Rogers]

Such a mood of futility you have created...a child of 6 worked 12 hour

days and learned
The word despair! I liked the word choice ( poppethead ) and the vivid picture you
of (the smoke
Poured out of the poppethead ) good for-Andrew he was brave and saw through to the evil that the mine had created for all in town" satan'lair" and put a stop to it once and for all. Happily he was with his father once again in the end....your poems are magnificent. Thank you

[Valentine]

Chilling write. My sister-in-laws dad got black lung from working in the Virginia coal mines and died very young. Some kid...do not get mad...get even. Valentine

[softlyfall]

Atmospheric and emotionally engaging poem. My own grandfather lost his parents at 12 and went to work in the mine to support 5 younger siblings so this was especially interesting to me.
It gives me steadfast comfort when I read poetry with such excellent syntax and grammar. It gives additional strength to the impact as no errors exist to make one pause and correct internally.
The pathos you create is done so subtly, with a story detail here and an image there. I cannot say how much I admire this.