A Pit Pony's Lot Poem by Heather Reid

Mallifluent eyes searched the mind of the man,
As the cracked leather trappings were cast over her back,
Why did he do this again and again,
The man at the gaping mouth of the black.

Here day will perish into continual night,
Fertil colours cling to the edges of time,
Shadows dissipate and are gone with the light,
Leaving only transient memories to shine.

Darkness has stolen the sight from her eyes,
Although open, dead orbs in their sockets remain,
The heart in her chest urges her to go on,
Lame on the hooves that are tender and blane.

Cutting underfoot, the shale unsympathetic,
How un-natural the smell of this underground world,
Moonless shapes are all her mind can envisage,
Not a field or a hedge or the song of the Merle.

No comforting fingers run over her flank,
In her metal full mouth no taste of the Skirret,
But a stinging reminder, whipped with a willow branch,
Pushes deeper a broken lost spirit.

Accepting her sufferance she starts her decline,
Torturous steps pick a perilous path,
In an airless chasm she waits in a line,
The smell of mans'sweat hangs heavy in the shaft.

Knocking and chipping, Picks echo on rock,
The blasts of explosions send deep distant sound,
Any life that she had before this is forgot,
Before she moved cart loads of coal from the ground.

The wooden burden that follows her round on her trek,
Does not go away but remains like the pain,
As she leans into the leather around her neck,
Her muscles burn as she takes up the strain.

With the cart fully loaded she tries to move on,
Remaining, her head's roughly seized,
She can no longer do this for the man in the dark,
Collapsing she falls to her knees.

Broken-winded and sallow her life ebbs away,
She dies in the death that she lived in,
The man in the dark has nothing to say,
Nor the pony that passes her, limping...