National Coal Board

On what was once National Coal Board land,

at the edge of the former pit village

are car show rooms and a builders’ merchant –

like the outskirts of a provincial town

except for the slag heap, bull-dozed on top

and planted with birches, that looms above

the preserved pit head. Beyond the village

is pasture, and then a walled estate

with a modest late Georgian mansion,

open daily to the paying public,

set back above a shallow valley.

 

At the edge of this pastoral landscape,

a November sun, low in a misty sky,

turns the slag heap into a tumulus

and the winding gear into a prayer wheel –

a revolution’s relics. Through the vale

a brook, ice age vestige, meanders.

In its bed of pale silty clay, beneath

autumn leaves, are coal shards.