The Miner's Rag

The house roused freezing to a winter’s morn

of belligerent clouds dirtying the light into a filthy grey
and she begging flames from a cantankerous stove.
In old wool, she dressed, a frayed apron and still
yawning her way out of the night’s damp slumber.
The waiting kettle, filled with hauled water
for brewing tea and boiling eggs,
near to simmering while she to rough knifing
into wholemeal bread and coercing stubborn butter,
as hard as iron’s ire, on to each thick cut of her labours.
Himself, half-dressed, a-stood death-like,

pleading for each breath,
black coughing into a bloodied rag, fear and a cuss
’till taken in hunger to the kitchen table.
Hankered into the morning’s fare.
He gnawed and supped, breaking off,
when wrenching free the vile splotched phlegm
and she, all in worries; bagging fodder for his lunch.
When cleared his lot, he took to leaning back some;
pinching a lock of baccy loose from a hung pouch,
crowded it into a paper leaf; rolled, licked  and sealed.
When fired up, he drew the smoke, dark and deep;
exhaling, peaceful-like, the blue plumes of poison.
“Aah, the workin’man’s pleasure.” He’d sigh.
“They’ll surely kill ya, someday.” She, retorting.
“’Tis true, me dear,” he’d reply,
“’twixt them and the black dust, ’tis only a matter of when,
but who’d deny me, this tranquil pause?”
She helped him with the buttons of his coat,
fixed his cap and wrapped his scarf tightly
around his neck.
Kissed his cheek, waited the door,
watching him, careful in his winter gait
mid the morning’s labourers chiselling
through the hard dawn -
and he, to the bowels of hardship,
digging into the accursed blackness,
coughing up his day’s toil
and tranquil pauses
into a bloodied rag.