Soon to be lost but not forgotten !

[dazb]

A MINING HERITAGE.

Couldn’t hear it then
Or wouldn’t listen.
Surrounded by living evidence
But I never saw it.
Old men struggling to breathe
Younger men slowed in pace.
Shoulders squared
And heaving chests
With indrawn effort
Laboured in conversation.
Victims of crueller times
They were of history
A closed antiquity
And now,
Well now,
I know better.