NaPoWriMo #23: Rivers of Coal

Up in the hills where the collieries sleep,
where the railway tracks are submerged in moss,
the wheels atop the tower seem to weep
the stones in the blacksmith's yard are all glossed
in a dwindling frost fleeing from the spring.
Caverns beneath the hills vast and still,
adorning the grey cliffs to which they cling,
sheltering sheep against the mountain chill.
The descendants live in the past's shadow
claim the ruins for their own, make them new,
no longer the halls where molten fires flow
but a monument to the mining crew.
Within these hills run the rivers of coal
that brought to the valleys their heart and soul

(And so, to celebrate the birthday of his majesty the Shakespeare, I bring you a sonnet about that most familiar of Welsh subjects.)

Remnants

There sits a man by a lake in the cold valley,
hunched over, still, face as scarred as the old quarry
waiting for the wheel to turn, coal to flood back in.
Gone, those days, remnants of steel and masonry.

Snow settles, night draws in, freezes fireless furnace,
yet he sits by the lake, eyes the winding tower,
sits, waiting, hopes for the wheel to resume turning.
Black gold no more, the mine sleeps despite his yearning.

NaPoWriMo #22: The House with No Name

It sits on the hill
as an empty skeleton,
its residents vanished,
the mortgage no more,
who knows if it ever had one?

Now it's a monument
to something unknown and untold,
a vestige
from when trams
rolled up and down
the coal-choked hills.

The decrepit door
allows whispers
to cross the silent threshold.
The tumbledown walls
long surrendered to the moss.
Somewhere in that ruin
the chipping of pickaxes
resonates in the dark.

NaPoWriMo #18: The Beast Beneath the Coal

And so I've matched my previous NaPoWriMo record on day eighteen. With this in mind, here's a poem straight from the South Wales Valleys.

The Beast Beneath the Coal

Hills of coal in the southern valleys,
where miners made their homes,
the old ruins of their industry
scattered across the snow-swept slopes.

The beast dwells in the deep caverns
which the miners didn't reach.
Slumbering on a bed of coal
lined with slivers of gold,

no colliery knew of it,
no cavers ever stumbled on it,
and yet the scaly wonder
draws on the warmth
from the rocks above its lair,
waiting for the day
to erupt out of the valley
in a cloud of soot and flame.