The Village Thornley Flood
Childhood is a wonderful place to be
children have no idea they are poor
when everyone else is too,
our village was small one of dozens surrounding us
all of them sustained by their mine
they boasted they never closed,
they shared a common voice
the village siren
it sounded off for only two things ????
enemy bombers or disaster at the colliery ?????
The miners were fiercely competitive
in their productivity,
of their women, about their leisure
some tales of their capacity for drink
their ability in a fight
became their stuff of legends
The country was at war with Germany
our village was at war with mother nature
these men had dared to venture into hell
stealing her black gold to fund the wheels of war
and the industrial heartbeat of England
they called it “The Pit”
And so that siren sounded one morning early winter ????morning
as children prepared for school
no breakfast there never was “the war you know”
with alarms still ringing in our ears
the street was filling with people voices calling
“it’s the pit! our Ben’s in this shift
where is your Jack ?
men were running toward the mine head
women gathering in small groups
following behind filling the air with panic
the pit was filled with men on the early morning shift ????
The mine-head a tall tower
With immense wheels atop
Capable of lowering a dozen men
In a cage a mile underground
then back again at days end
By evening the wheels were motionless
They had brought survivors to surface
Taken those dirty black angels
Brave volunteers from miles around
Into the depths again and again
Ferrying wounded and the dead
They called a hasty tally
For the wives and the families
Five men still missing
A torrent of water
From an earlier flood
Had broken through
Without warning
Families stayed on
into the freezing darkness ????freezing
throughout next day
and the next
hopes rising and falling
at every turn of the wheels
After a decent interval
at that place
management engineers announced
it was apparent that
all lives were lost
they were at that very moment
sealing off the area
from the rest of the mine
and so with those few words
the village buried their dead.
Copyright by the author 2003 Beatrice Evans