Voices in the Coalshed

My View Today

Christina Longden:

Two children throwing punches

Arguing over “crap packed lunches”

Home Schooling in the garden shed

“Sooo bored- going back to bed.”

Jackie Garrood:

Mill pond

Forest of green trees

Verdent pathways

Bull rushes and flag iris

Stand to attention

Water lily platform waiting

Silent ripples

Mirror glass reflections

All is quiet in the evening sun

Voices in the Coal shed

Kate Fraser Looking out on shades of green,
Speckled with buttercups,
Lively blackbirds singing for food.
Bird table distractions from the whining of washing,
The clatter of pencils, “Can I stop now, mum?”

Inside another day of grey clouds, grey minds, grey chatter.
The garden brings hope of brighter days to come.

Julia Chalkley Watery exclamations on the window
Clouds lurking overhead
Shiny drops gathering on the washing line
Drops dripping from the shed.

Pam Waites Wet, wet and dull
But lots of colour and very green Lawn
But no problem as inside warm and cosy and
I can make my own view with my patchwork quilt project
Roses and chocolate fabric and colours, building to a beautiful view

Carolyn Newton Family in the distance
Waving in the mist
Moving a little nearer
Never to be kissed

Social distance walking
Babies to be seen
Cuddles got to wait
Virus to be clean

Moments to be treasured
Weeks and months to be measured
Normality will be precious

Sharon Healy Grey skies
Trees waving gently
Shades of green.
Blackbird- yellow beak,
Feeding on the lawn.
Hunting for tasty worms to feed the babies.
Drizzle gently falling to the ground.

Barbara Neale As I walk along
by hedgerows full of song
And walk through an arch
footsteps dragging, not a march
See trees as tall as towers
lower branches forming towers
Home to birds with different hues
Help to lift my dormant blues
As I espy one through a leaf
glad’ning my heart, easing my grief
Watching birds both large and small
hearing their song, their mating call
Troubling thoughts begin to cease
Different leaves, different trees
Soon I see brick and stone
into crowds no longer lone
But now upbeat and very calm
the trees, the birds have been my balm

Concrete Poem

In early February, before Lockdown, a party of Year 3 children from Boothroyd Primary Academy had a visit to the Mining Museum. While there they ran into Dave Alton, the museum's resident poet, who invited them to to collect words and phrases from the information boards. The intention was to use their contributions to make a sort of free verse poem. However, the flip chart page they subsequently produced is a work of art in its own right (should that be write?), a concrete poem of found words.

For Now... (...this museum* is closed)

Pit bottom, for now, deserted,

Surrendered back to the darkness.

Ghosts of colliers past alerted

And begin to gather, to press

Themselves into and occupy

This hollowed earth. Fossilised fronds

Begin to sway in a warm, sly

Breeze that blew by primeval ponds,

Resurrection of anthracite,

Born again up into a world,

Never exposed to human sight,

As actual trees, before being hurled

Down by storm or time, as if chance,

Or some undivined divine plan,

Determined it would be so. Hence,

Tremendous power assumed by man,

Until, for all that industry,

A meagre mote of RNA,

Invisible, but broken free,

Sent humankind scuttling away.

Headstock is stilled, the cage locked down,

Canaries sing for all their worth,

The last shift’s hooter, long since blown,

Echoing through our hollow earth.

                                                                                                        Dave Alton

* National Coal Mining Museum of England and Wales.

Below are two poems written about the present medical crisis. So far there are 6 in the series, posted at www.sonnetwright.blogspot.com . I invite people to submit poems, or even ideas for poems, for the Coalshed Poets blog on this or a related, however distantly, theme. Please send to bellowingbob1@aol.com.
Important: Please put your poem in the main body of your email from where I can copy and paste it. No attachments please.

Dave Alton

(Coalshed Poet - National Mining Museum) 

Covid-19 (No.6)

Take a strand of RNA, tie a knot

And make a wish, count phases of the moon.

Pray nothing pernicious comes this way soon,

Or if it should then it doesn’t draw your lot.

One hundred years after the Somme ended,

Exercise Cygnus played H2N2

On the gaming table: Only, it’s not flu

But coronavirus that’s descended.

It seems predictions were catastrophic,

So, were noted and quietly filed away,

Until came the contagion, came the day

For the accounting of the mounting sick.

Austerity, efficiency, not fate

Has proved “just in time” is far, far too late.

                                                                                                   Dave Alton

Covid-19

This poem is posted to mark the first day of the public closure of the National Coal Mining Museum of England.

There are no rats streaming off from rigged ships,

No bell clanging crier calling out the dead,

No trundling overburdened tumbrils led

By masked spectres as the malady grips.

No crosses daubed over doors, though handles

And handshakes could prove fatal. Fast as fear

This plague flies, a traveller’s souvenir

Round the carousel of the world, dandles

Life and death without intent or purpose

Other than its own being. City shaken,

Markets deserted and futures tumbling.

The preachers of profit are at a loss,

While pubs are closing, last orders taken.

Lock all the doors…but the walls are crumbling.

                                                                           Dave Alton