My father woke up startled every time,
as bug-eyed as Fuseli’s nightmare horse,
as if around him the collapsing mine
crushed on him still with overwhelming force.
As if plucked back by magic from the dead,
like undead Lazarus stunned for breath he sat,
looked at the plaster cracking overhead
for one last fatal tremblor in the shaft.
Sweat soaked, stiff, on the bed edge he would sit,
hands clenched in covers as if dug in dirt
still hearing in his mind-mine’s creak and sift,
the cave-in that they pulled him from “unhurt”.
Done with the mines, the mines weren’t done with him.
Each coal grit breath a lost lung’s rough raked rasp,
years later still as desperate and grim,
my father always woke up with a gasp.
Child ignorant, I never knew to thank
my dad, who fought back daily from the dead,
for shaking off the dream from which he shrank
to go back underground to earn our bread.
©WILLIAM JOHN WATKINS
William John Watkins 