A railway is all that remains –
a heritage steam line
with emerald engines and mahogany carriages,
cheerful whistles and waving children,
a self-important station master
admiring his golden pocket watch,
but this is the wrong past.
Trucks clattered across these tracks
crammed with the black rocks
that broke the backs
of pit ponies
and men alike,
rattling down to the banks of the Tyne
to the waiting ships
that carried the coal away,
before the engine’s endless slog
back up the hill to the mine,
wheels and pistons
moving like the feet of infantrymen
through pounded battlefield mud.
Now families sit at picnic tables,
heather blooms in embankments
and the old pit wheel
seems to sketch itself
back onto the empty sky.
Beneath the ploughed fields,
the earth strains
with the weight
of unmined coal.
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My latest book is You Are My North, published by Lapwing Publications.
‘Who said journalists don’t have poetry in their souls? … (His) words will echo with anyone who has ever lost or missed a loved one’. The Press, York (read the write-up here)
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All written and photographic content on this website is copyright material, James R Kilner 2024