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Dark Side Poems Scrumpers

Penrhiwceiber Colliery 1872 – 1985

Men conceived me as slave, built me out of steel and brick, but I’ve outgrown them – now I control. They come to me and grovel – that’s the deal. Their reward? – to suck dust for a scratch of coal. I am Reformer: I ink the Cynon black as Acheron and sludge Ceiber’s green […]

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Poems Scrumpers Trees & Stones

Embraced

I’ve come again to the head of the dell, to the old elm and the ancient boulder. A fine rain is falling, yet I like this place well – although why, I can’t say. And still the tree holds the itinerant stone like a caring mother: for though the tree is old, a low good […]

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Poems Scrumpers Wild Bunch

Scrumpers

Tree high in the humid dark we scrumped forbidden fruit, fingered through night-leaves for fat, green globes, stretched for big ones that weighed the tips low. A tweak and they snapped clean, came plump and cool into the cupped hand – each one precious, every one ours. We stripped the top limbs first, picked towards […]