Polyphemus
(1613 AD)
Davey-lamped
one-eyed king
caged in his cavern
a songbird
dispels shadows
lights up his life
pit pines creak
can’t strike a match
walking by touch
lungs black and scarred
following the seam
back to iron cages
singing dark hymns
hoping to surface
to walk in sunlight
a jail cell
these bars’ lifelong
death sentence
below the pit-ponies
frantic and anxious
the pit’s pet canary
dead on his perch
rogermoorepoet 
Re: Polyphemous This one is very dark (no pun intended). I loved the dark imagery, and imagined myself down there. I worked *at *the mines for 2 summers, and *in* those mines for part of one summer as well. I did not prefer going down into the mines. Not so much the claustrophobia so much as the inevitability of a cave in at some point. This is a good one, to my taste. Chuck
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I and my family avoided the mines. Whenever a disaster struck, we knew many of the people involved. Small and very close communities.
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I’m Root-ing for them all.
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Evocative Roger. Beautifully put together.
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Thanks, Don. 1613 is the date of Gongora’s Polifemo, a wonderful poem that defies translation and that stirred up a huge language controversy in Spain: to write vernacular Peninsula Spanish or Latinized Spanish … and the evolution of poetic language is still a quandary. Hence these new efforts of mine.
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Your effort is so good, Roger.
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Thank you so much, Don. I am working on a new series. It’s great fun.
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A powerful evocation of your Welsh heritage, Roger… and of my own Yorkshire history relating to the iron mines of the Cleveland Hills.
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Thank you, Roland. Yorkshire, eh? The land of Fiery Fred where a boycott means cricket and Johnny Wardle is a young batsman’s tariff and an old boy’s joy!
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… and to be Close was to be the silliest mid-off ever!
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“What if it had it you in the eye, not in the forehead? “Well, he’d have been caught at mid-wicket instead of at mid off.” Remember that one? Close and Wilf Wooller two of a kind. And don’t forget Bill Alley. All tougher than today!
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