Best Miners Poems

day in the life of a coal miner 

in the darkness you hear them
their boots clumping along the cobbled stones
not dawn yet ...yet still they are on their way to work
young lads of 15 plus.

these are miners sons
following the traditions
each generation go down the pit
twelve...

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Into the bowels of the earth we descend
Down into the pit of hell
Crawling on hands and knees to mine
This precious fuel they call coal

Now Petey and I we are almost men
He is ten and I'm eleven
Been working here, down this mine
These last two years and...

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The mass production of coal is dead,
Buried infer lamps carried on the head,
Halogen miners sang the unforgiving dirge,
With fragments of flaky particles emerge,
Drilling hammers that smote the ground,
Never again to hear its rumbling sound.
Voices roar like dragons in damp vapour,
Highlighted the dangerous drudgery caper.
Its miners...

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High home summer hill

Straining, sucking, sitting

Staring, stopped and stick-

A pit-prop tight and gripped.

The trees across the valley

Much higher than he can go now.

I pant to reassure him

In time with his withered eyes.

His tongue, tombed gritty green

He’s faithful, though he’s fading

Bones in death-grey jumper

Where will he...

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Each man with his lunch box looks straight ahead
into the lens. It’s dawning, above ground. 
Why think about a sweetheart still a-bed?
Each man with his lunch box looks straight ahead.
They’re going down. Lost daylight like the dead
who never rise. Their pay is pick and pound.
Each...

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We watched the first trapped miner rise to light,
and marveled at the cable and the wheel,
how mountain might release essential night
to rebirth, on TV – as good as real.

We marveled at the cable and the wheel
a world of nations rigged to save a man
to rebirth,...

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If i could, I’d veil the earth
And keep it far without your view,
I’d wrap its bulk and hide its shape.
But that would be a waste of time.
Your eyes are those that see the depths
Of  the  deepest  bluest  seas.
I look around and...

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THE MINER’s TEAR

With a blackened finger he points and fears
This terrible day of four hundred tear’s
Young mothers, wives and brides to be
Their loved ones smile once more to see.

Who will they bring from this hell?
Deeper than the drinking well.
Young David? Just a boy you know!
Or...

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Homeward bound in the evenings, weary miners cross the ridge
Returning from the deep mines black as the coal they uncover
Not far from the grandeur of the New River National Gorge Bridge
Homeward bound in the evenings, weary miners cross the ridge
Generations of these men have considered...

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The union-management talks reach stalemates in their sessions.
Our representatives are attempting to gain concessions.
If we do not obtain better working conditions and a pay hike,
we see no other alternative but to go on strike.

On the slopes of Olympus Mons, we descend underground.
Inside this mine, deposits...

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Unrepentant Miners


I look out over what should have been viridian fields
Where daisy and dandelions
Found their picturesque beauty
Wild and free

I felt the meadow of summer skies
Lay their heads beneath your bare feet
To kiss at your ankles with their secrets
Wild and free

I saw the written verses
Your laughter...

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1977 BRIDGE SITE MINER`S BLUES.
Down in old south Brisbane, 
where the derro`s do hang out, 
Where the pipes were stacked 6 high, 
the homeless camped about. 
I was working mate as a miner, 
on a new railway bridge site, 
They lived in pipes on different...

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The mining villages of Wales
are steeped in history and tales
of sons and fathers, duty-bound
who earned a pittance underground.

For generations miners toiled
with picks and shovels, faces soiled.
Their throats parched dry and fingers raw,
black gold the aim, etched scars the score.

And mountains whisper tales of men
who failed...

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The watcher on her porch, alone,
Where Fortune lived in days bygone,
She knows the stories; knows the names
Of all the miners and their claims.

She came out here a slip of four
Calling it home for ninety more.
Shotgun in hands, she rocks her chair,
Guarding the miners and their...

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An old Point Man phoned, “Do ya think you can do it?.  
Driving doggies and cows from the flanks of Mt. Stewart?"
Fattened on grass for a year they had stayed. 
“Move a river of horns down to Yakima Quay?”

I ride for the brand, (vaqueros...

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